Jacob's Club

Club is a range of chocolate covered biscuits sold in Ireland under the Jacob's brand name and in the United Kingdom under McVitie's.

W & R Jacob and Company started producing the ‘’Club Milk’’ biscuit in Dublin just before the outbreak of World War I. It became a popular brand across Ireland. The confection consisted of two rectangular Marie biscuits forming a filled sandwich using a cocoa cream, then covered in thick milk chocolate. Each bar was wrapped in foil, and then further wrapped in a paper outer wrapping.

Jacob’s originally used images of playing cards from the Club suit to illustrate and to advertise the new biscuit. The “Club” name was therefore a reference to this suit.

It is unclear exactly when Club Milk biscuits were first imported to England, perhaps beginning informally owing to the trade route between Ireland and the English port of Liverpool. Jacob’s had already established a factory in Liverpool in 1914, and subsequently began producing the Club Milk there.

In 1970 the Irish and British parts of the Jacob’s company split into two firms. The Club biscuit had by this time become popular throughout Great Britain, and was marketed in five varieties. The original Club Milk (made with milk chocolate) was joined by a Club Plain (made with plain chocolate). The term “Club” was expanded for this new product, with a golf ball used to illustrate the wrapper, rather than the Club suit of cards. Two flavoured versions, Club Orange and Club Mint, were made by adding flavouring to the cocoa cream. The Club Fruit variant included raisins in the cocoa cream between the two biscuits. A further Club Honeycomb variety followed.

From the late 1980s into the 1990s Jacob’s used the advertising slogan “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club”. This was set to music, and used as a theme in television advertising campaigns during these same decades. In 2012 the jingle was voted by a sample of British adults to be "the seventh catchiest jingle of all time".

In the mid 1990s both the Irish and British Jacob’s companies were acquired by French-owned Groupe Danone who redesigned both the biscuit and the packaging. The two biscuits held together by cocoa cream were replaced with a single biscuit, topped with cocoa cream. The real chocolate exterior was replaced with a thinner layer of chocolate-based coating. The original milk and plain biscuits were discontinued, whilst the flavoured varieties were repackaged in cellophane flow pack.

...
Wikipedia