Chupa Chups is a Spanish lollipop company founded by the Catalan employer Enric Bernat in 1958. It is pronounced choo-pa-CHOOPS, IPA , from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "lick" or "suck".

History

In the early 1950s, Bernat worked for an apple jam factory. As he introduced later his idea of lollipops to the investors, they left. Bernat took over the company in 1958 and renamed it to Chupa Chups. He constructed the machines and sold a striped bonbon on a wooden stick for one peseta each.

Bernat got the idea of a "bonbon with a stick" from a cursing mother as her child got sticky hands from melting sweets that it wiped off on the cloth. He came up with his lollipop idea as he thought that, at that time, sweets were not designed with the main consumers, children, in mind. The shopkeepers were also instructed to place the lollipops near the cash register within reach of children's hands - instead of the traditional placement behind the counter.

The Chupa Chups company was quite a success. Within five years his sweets were sold at 300,000 outlets. After the end of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), the self-funded private company went international. In the 1980s it expanded to the European and American markets and in the 1990s to the Asian and Australian market. In 1995 a Chupa Chups lollipop was brought to the Mir space-station. Today (2003) 4 billion lollipops a year are sold to 150 countries with 2000 employees, 90 percent of abroad sales and a € 500m turnover.

In 1991, Bernat passed formal control of "Chupa Chups" to his son Xavier. The Smint subsidiary brand/company was founded in 1994.

Logo

The Chupa Chups logo was designed by the surrealist Salvador Dalí. The first marketing was the logo with the slogan "És rodó i dura molt, Chupa Chups", which translates from Catalan as "it is round and lasts a long time." Later, celebrities like Madonna were hired to advertise. In the 1980s, due to falling birth rates, an anti-smoking slogan "Smoke Chupa Chups" was tried to attract further adult consumers.

External links

• Chupa Chups site (flash)
• Smint site