Chocolate & Candy

Along the Adriatic coast and inland Serbian towns alike, Galeb bars line the checkout counters of small markets as an easy grab-and-go treat. Produ...

Generations of Serbian schoolchildren have known the plain Galeb milk cream bar as pocket money's simplest reward at the neighborhood kiosk. This P...

Summer visits to Serbian seaside towns often meant a stop at a corner shop for a fruit-filled Galeb bar to cool off with. Made by Pionir, this milk...

In Germany and Austria the lilac wrapper has needed no explaining since 1901, and the Triple bar is the one people open when a single kind of choco...

Yummi Gummi is the bag a Ukrainian parent buys at the kiosk to settle an argument on the way home, and the little bears always go first. Roshen Yum...

The Hauchzarte Herzen carton is a fixture of German Valentine's and Mother's Day - wafer-thin heart-shaped tablets in a flat gift box, bought on th...

Groovy Crunchy Brezel is Ritter's pretzel square, and in Swabia - pretzel country, and Ritter's own home ground - putting salted Brezel pieces into...

The Nussklasse bars are Ritter's whole-nut line - the ones a German shopper reaches for when the nut should be seen and heard, not just tasted. Rit...

The mint square is the Ritter that lives in the glovebox and the desk drawer - dark chocolate, a cold green filling, and the same snap-off corner a...

Ritter Sport Joghurt was a German first when it arrived in 1971 - nobody had put yoghurt inside a chocolate bar before, and it landed squarely in t...

Maoam is what German kids chant at the kiosk counter, and the Bloxx cube is the shape it takes when one piece has to last the walk home. Maoam Blox...

Milka Oreo White is the bar teenagers in Skopje and Belgrade pick off the kiosk shelf when they want something sweeter than the plain purple one. T...

The big purple slab is the one a Balkan family buys for the whole table, not the pocket — the bar that comes out after Sunday lunch and goes around...

The purple Milka bar with whole hazelnuts is the one German and Balkan children learn to snap along the squares so the nuts stay whole. This is Mil...

A Baltic winter evening ends with strong coffee and a dark Pergalė tablet passed around the table. This is dark chocolate with whole hazelnuts — wh...

Pergalė's dark tablets are Lithuania's box of pride — 'excellent since 1952,' as the Vilnius factory still prints on its pages. This is dark chocol...

In Vilnius, Pergalė has been the chocolate of family visits since 1952 — the tablet you bring to the table, not the one you hide. This is dark choc...

Ukrainian kids call it porysty — the bubbly chocolate you press to the roof of your mouth to feel the bubbles give way. Roshen Bubble is aerated mi...

The sweets counter is where Kyiv stops on the way home, and Roshen's Lacmi bars are its newest temptation. Lacmi is milk chocolate with a strawberr...

Rope candy you unbraided strand by strand on the school bus, making it last until your stop — Roshen's twists are that game in a bag. Ukraine's Ros...

Half dark cocoa, half milky white — Eurocrem Blok is the two-tone bar you bought with pocket money at the corner shop, the taste every ex-Yu genera...

The candy rack by the till at every Kyiv corner shop — sour sticks were the treat you grabbed with the change, and the pucker still means childhood...

Every Yugoslav kid knows the move: peel the wrapper halfway down and bite through the chocolate shell first — Bananko was the kiosk reward on the w...

In Serbian households, a foil-wrapped block of Eurocrem has been the after-school treat spread thickly onto fresh bread since the 1970s. This milk-...