On October 30, French newspaper Libération revealed that Cadbury Fingers, the "perfect link between fine Mikado and large Twix," had not been put out on French supermarket shelves since the spring, without any official announcement. When questioned, food giant Mondelez International, which absorbed Cadbury in 2010 and also owns LU, Toblerone, Côte d'Or and Milka, among others, declined to comment. Its British subsidiary, responsible for distributing the biscuits in France, also declined to comment. This left it to Lightbody Europe, the Fingers' intermediate distributor, to confirm that they would no longer be sold. And there was no mention of any possible return to French shelves.

As in 2015, with the disappearance of Figolu, a biscuit stuffed with figs as the name suggests and also owned by Mondelez International and put up for sale again five years later, the end of Fingers has sent nostalgic gourmands into a tizzy: "We trust industrial brands to return to a precise taste standard with each consumption experience, a standard to which attachment has been built up over the course of pleasurable experiences. When Cadbury withdraws its Fingers without warning, the trust established with the brand is shattered," analyzed Sophie Thiron, a doctor in the sociology of the relationships between food and emotions at Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès University. "The vessel with the potential to enable us to travel to other times, other contexts or to visit people from our past has vanished," she explained. In other words, chocolate escapism.

In 1824, John Cadbury, a Quaker, opened a small store in Birmingham, selling tea, coffee and cocoa. At the time, cocoa was only consumed by the wealthy and was not available in bar or cookie form. In 1897, the family business, seeking to make this exotic product accessible to the general public, offered its Fingers for the first time in assortments sold in tin boxes. It wasn't until 1950 that these long, thin, chocolate-covered biscuits, which are both convenient to eat and easy to share, were marketed in suitable packets, quickly becoming a tea-time classic in the UK.

One of the many fans of Cadbury treats was Queen Victoria, who in 1854 granted the brand a royal warrant. This august token of approval allowed selected companies to display the monarch's coat of arms on their products and advertising materials. Renewed by Elizabeth II, this label, a real asset for promoting sales in the UK as well as exports, particularly to China and Japan, came to an end with her death in 2022. Several Ukrainian associations then asked Charles III not to renew the precious mandate, due to Mondelez International's intense economic activity in Russia. Buckingham Palace did not publicly react, but the Fingers lost their privileged seal of approval in the process.