William Salice, who has died aged 83, played a leading role at the confectionery giant Ferrero for four decades, helping to launch the Kinder Surprise chocolate egg in 1974; in the decades since, more than 30 billion of the treats have been sold around the world.
Starting out at Ferrero as a salesman in 1960, Salice established himself as something of a marketing guru in the days when the concept was still in its infancy. He became a close friend and colleague of the company's boss, Michele Ferrero – a reclusive figure who had transformed his father's cafe business into a global confectionery empire through the success of his chocolate spread, Nutella.
The recipe for Nutella had been conceived as a way of making cocoa supplies stretch further with the addition of hazelnuts, and it was in the same practical spirit that Ferrero charged Salice with developing a chocolate egg that would sell throughout the year, making use of the company's existing Easter egg moulds. The first Kinder Surprise eggs arrived on Italian shelves (as "Kinder Sorpresa") in 1974.
Salice put the immediate success of the product down to the relative poverty of that decade. Italian toy stores were virtually non-existent and the cheap "surprise" toys, which require little effort to assemble, had the added appeal of being easily collectible. In Germany, limited-edition eggs containing jigsaw puzzles or hand-painted figurines enjoyed huge popularity, while Christmas versions carried tiny nativity sets.
The use of sweet milk chocolate (with a white chocolate layer on the inside to mimic the colour of an eggshell) appealed broadly to children around the world – though their allure was considered too great by authorities in Chile, who last year announced a ban on foodstuffs containing "toys, accessories [or] incentives" in an effort to combat spiralling obesity rates among children.
There were other health concerns. Salice had made sure that the capsule containing the toy was deliberately made difficult to open, both to encourage parents to take an active role in assembling the contents and to prevent very young children from swallowing any of the smaller parts. Despite these measures, however, there were a number of high-profile incidents. In 2000, two British families whose children had died after choking on the components in a Kinder Surprise egg made an unsuccessful parliamentary appeal to have them withdrawn from sale.
In America, the eggs fell foul of a federal law banning the insertion of a "non-nutritive object" into confectionery. American chocolate lovers responded with an online petition to Congress, and in 2013 a New Jersey manufacturer produced a legally sanctioned version, which had a plastic ridge clearly visible from the outside of the egg in order to alert consumers to the inedible element within.
William Salice was born in Casei Gerola in the province of Pavia, northern Italy, on July 18, 1933. Working alongside Michele Ferrero, whom he regarded as a father figure and a "genius" to be ranked alongside the computer pioneer Adriano Olivetti in terms of his contribution to Italian business, Salice also helped to manufacture and market the Ferrero Rocher after-dinner chocolate, introduced to Europe in 1982, and the Pocket Coffee, a shot of liquid espresso encased in milk chocolate.
After retiring in 2007, Salice set up the Colour Your Life Foundation, which provided education opportunities and hosted summer camps for young people between the ages of 13 and 18 at the St Augustine monastery of Loano. During his final illness, his hospital room was adorned with pictures from the foundation's students, as well as a football scarf for Inter Milan, of which he was a passionate supporter.
Telegraph, London