Roald Dahl chocolates take novel approach

"Don't bother with the kings and queens of England," Roald Dahl told an audience of schoolchildren in 1986. "All of you should learn these dates instead. Perhaps the headmistress will see from now on that it becomes part of the major teaching in this school."

Dahl's vision was for a chocolate curriculum on the years 1930-37, when Britain first unwrapped the foil of the Whole Nut Bar, the Crunchie, KitKat, Mars bars and more. For the author, who had tested Cadbury's newest chocolates in sample boxes as a schoolboy, these were the classics.

Today Dahl's name is consorting with a different class of chocolate altogether, as crafted by British chocolatier Chantal Coady of Rococo Chocolates, made OBE last year for "services to chocolate making".

Under a royalty agreement with the Roald Dahl Estate, Rococo, which has a turnover of about £2.7m, is launching a Roald Dahl range that also has permission to use Quentin Blake's famous drawings from Dahl's books. "Dahl has been top of my thoughts for at least 30 years," Ms Coady said of the project, which will give her free rein with all the Dahl stories bar Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for which Nestlé owns the Wonka brand.

After a £3.6m advertising reboot of the Wonka line in 2013, Nestlé ceased production in the UK last year, stating: "Novelty is by its nature often short term." Wonka bars are still sold in other territories.

Ms Coady plans to play up to Dahl's imaginative spirit with ideas such as "mouse formula" in a bar based on The Witches , or a dash of cider for the Fantastic Mr Fox version. "There is so much fun we can have," Ms Coady said. The range will launch for Easter with "Roly-Poly Bird" and "Enormous Crocodile" eggs (tagline: "No children were gobbled in the making of this egg").

Dominic Gregory, editorial director of the Roald Dahl Literary Estate, said: "Roald knew the business of exploitation . . . He didn't turn his nose up at it, if it could be done well. He was always disappointed that what he'd envisaged from 1971 [when the Willy Wonka film aired] never quite came to pass."

The author's widow, Felicity Dahl, said her late husband would be "thrilled". "He so admired people who thought outside the square. Chantal's imagination matches up to the Wonka factory." Nestlé, Mrs Dahl said, "were completely mad not to have generated great Wonka chocolate."

Though Dahl is one of the most-read authors in British primary schools, his name does not guarantee confectionery sales. James Booth, director of Rococo, said: "I'm the Eeyore of the business: collaboration is a very tricky thing to get right, the joint branding." But he added: "We're fairly flexible. If something does take off, we can respond quickly; we don't have to do a run of 10,000 bars to start the thing going. We love the stories and we're keen to see if it can work."

Beyond chocolate, this year also sees a stage adaptation of The Twits by Irish playwright Enda Walsh following other hit stage shows based on Dahl's books, and in 2016 Steven Spielberg's take on The Big Friendly Giant will launch in cinemas.

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