The Company That Invented Kit Kat Bars Once Made A Chocolate Bar Just For Driving

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As we have explored before, in great, painstaking detail, finding a food one can eat while driving is a decidedly non-trivial challenge. My research has shown that a human’s need to consume food actually pre-dates our ability to drive, and as such the problem of eating and driving has existed in the world of motoring from the very beginning. Solutions to this problem also date to the earliest days of motoring, and it’s one of these solutions I’d like to share with you today. A solution from the same candy-making source that gave the world the legendary Kit Kat. A solution called Rowntree’s Motoring Chocolate.

Before we go into the Rowntree Motoring Chocolate story, it’s worth reminding you of the perilous state of eating while motoring, which we can do via this scientifical film from Autopian Labs on the subject:

That’s very edifying, as I’m sure you’d agree. The problem was even worse at the dawn of motoring, when cars were far more complex to operate, including not just controls for steering, brake, throttle and shifting the transmission, but also manual spark advance, fuel richness and carburetor choke, oilers, manual windshield wipers, and much more. It was a big deal, and driving was even more physical then, meaning one would burn through calories even quicker, making on-the-road refueling for the driver as important as for the car.

So what was a 1910s motorist to do? Eat fistfulls of boiled mutton from a leathern pouch strapped to their chest? No, what are we, savages? The solution, at least according to Rowntree’s own (and I think largely fictional) Mr.York was something called Rowntree’s Motoring Chocolate.

As you can see from these old ads, Rowntree’s Motoring Chocolate was quite specifically targeted at drivers. Here’s how a website dedicated to the production of chocolate in York, England, describes it:

“The 1920’s saw a rapid explosion of chocolate bars for personal consumption or ‘count lines’ as they are still referred to today, Rowntree’s contributed the Kit Kat, Aero, and Mr York’s Motoring Chocolate – a chocolate bar that you would purchase when refueling your motor car.”

Advertising for Motoring Chocolate were more effusive, as you’d probably guess. Look at the copy in this ad:

Ad1

” Have you got your Motoring Chocolate?”

” Of course I have,  said the driver, “I never go out for a run without some. It’s a very good meal at the wheel. and it doesn’t make you thirsty.”

“You’re right,” said Mr. York. “Motoring Chocolate is made specially nourishing for motorists so that they can lunch in the healthy open air and enjoy every minute of the glorious sunshine.

Look at that! It doesn’t make you thirsty and lets you enjoy every minute of the glorious sunshine! Try doing that with your hunk of shit Snickers bar!

So, essentially, Motoring Chocolate just seems to have been a normal milk chocolate bar with raisins and almonds in it. It hardly seems revolutionary now, but I guess at the time cramming raisins and almonds inside a chocolate bar was enough to make that into a full-fledged meal, complete with all of the nut meat and desiccated grapes that a driving body needs.

Ad3

Look at these ads! They’re so emphatically about motoring and driving, and it appears this agnostic regarding motorcycling or automobiling. Mr.York up there is riding that bar, complete with the three Hs: handlebars, horn, headlight – like it’s a giant, rectangular motorcycle.

Plus, they got actual cars and decorated them all to ornate hell to advertise these bars:

Car4

This thing is too heavily covered with what looks like fabric and icicles and gingerbread or whatever for me to positively identify it, and I think those are chocolate bars on the wheels. Did those things just get flung off wildly when this thing got rolling? Is that a weird skull-headed doll by the front fender? And why does it say “It’s fine said Mr.York Motoring” on the side? Does that make sense to anyone?

All of this is pretty amazing. Sure, this Motoring Chocolate wasn’t really any different than any candy bar someone pressed some trail mix into with the heel of their hand, and the reasoning used to qualify it as some sort of edifying meal-on-the-go is the same basic logic that a six-year-old would use to convince you that because chocolate cake has eggs and milk in it, it’s breakfast. The Motoring Chocolate is the ancestor of the Crunch Wrap Supreme and any other food with pretensions to be good for eating and driving, and for that reason alone, we should remember this forgotten cousin of the Kit Kat.

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Mercedes Streeter

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99 thoughts on “The Company That Invented Kit Kat Bars Once Made A Chocolate Bar Just For Driving”

  2. “the same basic logic that a six-year-old would use to convince you that because chocolate cake has eggs and milk in it, it’s breakfast”

    Six year olds are way smarter than adults give them credit for.

      2. Well sorted grocery stores here in Queens usually have a small section for anglophiles. If that’s not enough, there is always Myers of Keswick (scottish eggs!).

  5. “what looks like fabric and icicles and gingerbread or whatever for me to positively identify it, and I think those are chocolate bars on the wheels. Did those things just get flung off wildly when this thing got rolling? Is that a weird skull-headed doll by the front fender? And why does it say “It’s fine said Mr.York Motoring” on the side? Does that make sense to anyone?”

    “Cocaine is a hell of a drug”

    – Rick James

    Clearly as true in the 1920s and the 1980s as it is today.

  6. The best behind-the-wheel snacks are Date Newtons. Not Fig. Ever! Date Newtons are bite-size if you’re a pig like me, or two-bite-size morsels that don’t cause crumbs. Also, they’re nutritious and not too sweet.

  7. Damnit now you made me miss real Kit Kats, in foil, made in York, with the Rowntree logo on them. They really did taste much better (and certainly much better than the joke Hershey wax ones)

  8. In my opinion the real hero of motoring munching isn’t a food. It’s the humble but handy paper cup.

    Treat packaging can be distracting while driving. It can also tear, topple or down right fail in the worst of ways.
    Eating anything directly out of the wrapper is something only monsters do in a car. Too many flaky and crumbly variables.

    Don’t fret you fine, hungry denizens of automotive interiors across the globe.
    I have a solution.

    I present to you.. The paper cup!
    There are few motoring snacks it can’t handle. In an automatic or a manual.

    Step 1: Remove desired edibles from original packaging and place in paper cup.

    Step 2: Place paper cup full of desired edible goodness in a secure, easy to reach location. (Your vehicle’s cup holder is strongly recommended)

    Step 3: Enjoy the crumb free, smooth snacking that the paper cup can provide.

    It can handle them all.
    Crumbly snacks.
    Savory snacks.
    Cereal snacks.
    Homemade snacks.
    Poorly packaged snacks.
    Poorly recommended snacks.
    Snacks with a propensity to melt.

    Cocktail shrimp if you’re gross like that. (Shower Spaghetti is strongly not recommended)
    It’s been tested and proven to contain a certain amount of omelet and aided well to its automotive edibility.

    Join me in a cheers my fellow hungry drivers.
    Let us all lift our paper cups high, and cleanly drink the bottom crumbs of whatever the hell was in them!

    3. “Oh, this is the best pizza in a cup ever! This guy is unbelievable! He ran the old Cup ‘o Pizza guy out of business! People come from all over to eat this!”

  10. For grins, I searched ebay for “rowntree motoring”.

    There are metal signs and paper prints available of their old ads featuring the ventriloquist-dummy-looking man in the topshot.

    There is also a miniature dollhouse version of a Motoring Chocolate bar available; it’s about the size of a penny. I’m assuming it is not edible. 🙂

    1. I’m glad there’s a few of them still available apparently.

      I like the signs, but the slogan sounds like it’s a laxative…”can’t go without it”?!

      1. Apocryphal sick note from parent to school:

        “Johnny can’t come because he hasn’t been. The doctor has given him something to make him go, and when he’s been he’ll come.”

  11. No surprise that “York” was use as the character name since Rowntree was headquartered in York, England (as well as a few other chocolate brands). Visited the chocolate museum there and it made York sound like the chocolate capital of England. Rowntree was acquired by Nestlé but kept licensing Kit Kat through Hershey in the US. Which explains the slight difference in packaging. The reason why M&M’s are hard to find in England and Canada is that the Rowntree equivalent, Smarties, are sold there (the candy called Smarties sold in the US are called Rockets outside of the US). Had me confused when I tasted Smarties for the first time outside the US.

    1. And, of course, Rowntree’s were the original maker of the Yorkie bar, advertised as being a snack for lorry drivers. Until Jason posted this I had never heard of motoring chocolate, but now it all makes more sense.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeQNPJtMWY

      One of my favourite poster adverts:

      Comes in three convenient sizes:
      Big
      Enormous
      Gigantic

      And this is epic, from after the Nestle takeover: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/09/15/3205B44300000578-0-image-m-33_1457536638354.jpg

  12. Good Sir, I wish to partake of some of your delicious-smelling boiled mutton in yon leathern sack! Mmmmmm…

    I completely approve of this product, since my favorite candy bar is the Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar, which is basically the same thing. The most confusing part of this whole ad campaign, to me, is the strange use of the word “motoring” in two specific instances:

    At the beginning of the first advertisement: ” “STOP!” – said Mr. York, Motoring.” Now, clearly, it is not Mr. York who is motoring, unless they meant he was making motorboating noises with his lips or something? Was he a “mad” Lewis Carrol character like the Hatter?

    Then, on the photo of the decorated car: “ “It’s Fine” said Mr. York Motoring.” So, now is that his surname? If so, why was it set off with a comma before?

    Curiouser and curiouser…

    1. All of the well-to-do gentlemen of the era had double-barreled surnames, so he probably was Mr York-Motoring Esq.

      “You must remember the York-Motorings darling, they played croquet with the Saintjohn-Smythes at the Camberwell-Tartes’ country manor last Sunday. Rupert was persuaded to invest in some sort of confectionery business.“

  13. Can we talk about how the (British) Automobile Association’s early 20th century policy of telling AA motorcycle patrols to salute members in cross traffic and members “when a patrolman doesn’t salute, stop and ask why” is a legal workaround for identifying speed traps? Can’t be interfering with the police if someone *doesn’t* give a signal…

  14. I’m pretty sure a lot of candy companies ca. 1910s-1930s used to market chocolate bars as more of a convenient meal replacement*, instead of a dessert or a between meal snack, so I guess the idea was shove one of those in your mouth on a road trip so you didn’t have to make a special stop just to eat.

    *that’s how we got things like the Chicken Dinner Bar.

    1. It became especially common during the Great Depression. A person might see a candy bar purchase as frivolous, but if that bar is being sold as a “meal” for a nickel or a dime…what a bargain!

  16. Funny seeing the old “6d.” and “2d.” notation, with my only current reference to this being nail sizes that are still listed in “pennyweight”. Like a 16d (3-1/2″) nail being a “16 penny nail”.

    6 cent “cakes” and 2 cent “bars”… I wonder how much the 1/2 lb. size cost back then?

  17. Sounds like my favorite Ritter Sport Trauben Nuss (Raisin Nut) bar.

    Hey, does anyone else remember Pillsbury Space Food Sticks? My mother used to pack these for road trips in the late 60s or maybe early 70s. They were advertised as “The Perfectly Balanced Energy Snack.” They came in chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter flavors and were packaged in little foil pouches, 15 to a box.

    Space Food Sticks were derived from the development of easily handled food stuffs for Apollo astronauts. They were first available on Apollo 11, man’s longest road trip to date.

    Here’s how Pillsbury described them:

    “The energy snack developed by Pillsbury under a government contract in support of the U.S. aerospace program. A balanced nutrition food.”

    Wow. Remember when people trusted the government? That was a long time ago.

    The main ingredients were sucrose and corn syrup, so two sugars. I guess those balanced each other out.

    Anyway, road food.

    1. And, of course, the whole point of the Ritter Sport bar was that it was short enough to fit in the breast pocket of a sport jacket without breaking, so that one was specifically adapted to a particular purpose

    2. As a little kid in the ’70s, totally remember them.

      Didn’t they have a Skylab connection at that point as well? I mean, before OMG IT’S GOING TO FALL ON US SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN and all.

    3. My mom used to pack Space Food Sticks for me as an after-school snack. Weirdest food: consistency of a soft Tootsie Roll, slightly abrasive, your choice to chew it or just let it dissolve in your mouth. And I’m sure that foil-lined paper tube they came in is still extant in landfills everywhere. Between this and Tang, it must have really sucked at mealtime for American astronauts.

      1. Tang! OMG, did you ever get the coughing fit when you break the vacuum seal on a jar of Tang and have that ultra fine orange dust waft up into your nose and throat?

    4. We lived off that crap for a while.Not sure of the actual facts but I seem to recall the implication that the REAL astronauts actually ate these while in space. Those were the days.

  18. But it’s not just milk chocolate it seems – the ad also specifies there’s a “plain” version to be had as well.

    Which I imagine is perhaps the unsweetened baking stuff? Mmmm…old-timey chocolate.

    3. The UK and US are at their most divided over chocolate. Sure, we spell color the long way, have orange indicators and there was that whole war of independence thing, but you have no idea how huge the gulf between us is until you get in to chocolate.

      Plain or “dark” chocolate is posh. Over here you can get it in concentrations of cocoa so high it’s extremely difficult to enjoy. There is nothing the upper classes like more than misery.

      The only US market chocolate I could keep down was Milky Way Dark.

      Also milk chocolate shouldn’t taste of cheese. Waxy, crumbly cheese. Urgh.

      1. It’s starting to equalize a little on this side of the pond – there was a big vogue for dark chocolate in the last decade. It’s died down somewhat, but fortunately a decent amount stuck around.

        I was stationed in one of Europe’s chocolate capitals years back, and while I love the dark stuff, you’re right on about the insane concentrations available – 90% (!) is just too much, at least for me.

        And call me a trite, but I love British licorice!

      2. Well, this doesn’t apply to the UK because Brexit but it’s interesting that a lot of American chocolate is not considered chocolate in Europe. In the U.S. it has to be 10% cacao, while in Europe, it’s 20%. It’s hard to find a decent American chocolate but it’s seems like there’s a plethora of great chocolate across the pond.

        1. Because of expediency we copied pretty much all EU regulations after Brexit. So the UK is still burdened with doing everything is a safe, fair and reasonable way but now we have to pay a lot more money for everything. We could stop complying with the regs if we decided not to trade with our closest neighbours, but that would be even more stupid.

          Still, 51% of people thought freedom you can’t use was worth the cost.

  22. Americans’ love of always eating is my theory as to why the manual transmission isn’t popular here anymore. I’m not saying you can’t eat while driving stick, but certainly it’s a more complex procedure.

    1. This is the best theory on the loss of the manual transmission I have ever heard. I choose to firmly believe this is true, regardless of any facts to the contrary.

      1. I originally said it as a joke when I’d heard that it’s only in America that the manual is really dying, but as soon as it left my mouth I realized it sounded pretty plausible. For what it’s worth, I don’t actually know if that’s true that it’s only in America that manuals are dying.

    2. Well, that, and the vast majority of people never actually liked shifting manually, they just did it because there was no alternative until GM perfected automatic transmissions in the 1940s, and economic conditions in the postwar United States were more favorable for automatics to gain widespread popularity than they were in Europe. We also had bigger, lazier engines that didn’t really need manuals to get acceptable performance out of them, we didn’t tax on displacement, and our fuel has always been much cheaper

      1. Get outta here with your “facts” and “history”! We are self-loathing Americans, so the reason for everything must be because our countrymen are fat, dumb, and lazy! Not us, of course. Everybody else.

  23. I believe that ~100 years ago saying “That’s fine” was actually high praise, on par with saying something is “excellent” or “wicked” or “totally tubular”. IOW it has a much better connotation than the current meme-oriented usage of “this is fine”.

    Could this Mr. York be the same person who promulgated and popularized the peppermint patty?

    1. Even as late as the 1950s/1960s (I watch too much “Leave It To Beaver”) “that’s fine” is high praise.

      Maybe there was something else special about this many – the packaging or something else – that made it particularly easy to eat while motoring.

  24. I was hoping they’d at least claim that it was resistant to melting, even when subjected to your hand-heat. That’s what you really need of out a motoring chocolate.

      2. But that’s the only way in which M+Ms are motoring chocolate. Imagine if you could hold the package in one hand and just… take a bite of it, like you could with a chocolate bar.
        With M+Ms, you gotta pour ’em into your mouth – once you get past about the second pour, you’ll be obliged to tip your head back, eyes completely off the road. You’re creating a briefly-dangerous road condition as well as (more importantly) inviting tut-tuts from your fellow motorists (who are themselves struggling to eat enormous, floppy burritos).
        Frankly, motoring chocolate is an important area in which science has given up and really let us down.

        2. This deserves more discussion for sure, or I can subscribe to your newsletter. Either way.

          I do feel that a slightly softer motoring confection is the ticket. Molds to your hand a little for grip, like post-war steering wheels with the little ridges on the backside.

            1. Maybe for a drag race, but not for motoring. The older I get, the less pure sugar appeals to me…I like having the nuts and such now!

              I’m thinking chocolate with nougat so the bar has a little give to it.

          1. I make a blend of chocolate covered raisins, salted cashews and/or peanuts, portion it into a paper cup for ease of consumption and get my calorific fill in between gear changes. The other cup holder usually has a coffee in it for a truly well rounded motoring meal.

  25. Companies should go back to marketing foods specifically for driving. May I suggest that they come up with an Uncrustables driving sandwich? Or a one-handed lasagna push-pop? (I don’t think they can quite match the total sensory experience of shower spaghetti, so they should definitely use other pastas.)

        1. I believe they currently exist only in Soviet Canuckistan but McDix makes the McWrap, available as a breakfast variant. Is it a shitty non Mexican flavoured breakfast burrito? Maybe. Does it have the most advanced automotive friendly breakaway cardboard sleeve yet designed by man. Possibly.

      2. Paper? Wrap it in a tortilla. No wait, that makes it something completely different somehow.
        Though the ingredients and cooking method remain the same.

        1. Yes, the tortilla makes perfect sense but that makes it a wrap, not an omelette. I want a McOmelette in a paper sleeve like their hash browns! McDonald’s could do this tomorrow, they have the technology!

          1. WRONG!!!$^%$^%&!!!

            That makes it a breakfast taco. And breakfast tacos are the greatest driving food ever conceived by man or alien!!! Fight me!!!

      3. I think that sort of exists sizewise, in the little omelettes some hotel breakfasts have had. So maybe we aren’t far off from this existing, just needs to become more appetizing.

        The Dunkin “Wake Up Wrap” almost fits the bill too, just that is more tacolike as you say.

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