Geisha? Never heard of that before. Thanks for enlightening me on that one, Alex.

But interesting picks anyway:

Filipinos are a brand of biscuit-giant United Biscuits (now part of Kraft Foods, the brand was formerly owned by Nabisco). The “Filipinos” created a real shitstorm at the end of the 1990’s when Philippine government filed a diplomatic protest with the government of Spain, as they were deemed racist by the Filippines government (esp. the tagline “dark from the outside, white from the inside”). The brand was only available in Spain and Portugal at the time. I can’t recall what happened with the protest, but apparently they are nowadays available everywhere, including Finland.

Japp is a Marabou-brand from Sweden (now owned by…you guessed it…Kraft Foods). It’s from 1947 and – as the Yankie bar – a direct knockoff of the Mars chocolate bar. The name is, by Kraft foods own admission, derived from american wartime slang for japanese. The “S” in the name was changed to another “P”, so instead of JAPS, it’s been known – from the beginning – as JAPP.

Yankie is a Tom’s brand from Denmark. It has an interesting history: It was developed in 1946 by Tom’s as per US German high commission’s wishes for American troops in Germany. It was a huge hit with both American soldiers and Danish kids. For the rest of us, it’s a direct Mars ripoff. Interestingly the commissioning of a Danish company was originally explained with cost savings. Instead of shipping the stuff from the US to Germany, they could ship the chocolate bars from neighboring Denmark. However, in exchange for the chocolate bar “development work”, the US government supplied cocoa beans to Tom’s. I don’t know how much cheaper it was to get cocoa beans from Africa to Denmark vs. chocolate bars from US to Germany. (Tom’s factory in Denmark was designed by Arne Jacobsen)

Geisha is a wonderfully original Finnish creation from 1908. The original sweet with Geisha brand was a hard caramel (later rebranded Tokyo). The milk chocolate pralines with hazelnut filling are from 1962. The name “aspires to something beyond the everyday” (”Gei” = skillfulness, “Sha” = someone who knows). The name was chosen purely because of the mystique of the Orient and interest in Japanese culture. It never was or meant to be a social commentary of any sort.

So there.