The History of The Kinder Surprise

The History of the Kinder Surprise

My children used to beg to me as we waited to pay for our groceries at the grocery store."Father,can you by us a kinder surprise ?,please Father,will you?"

Well i must say i bought a lot of the kinder surprises for my children,and took great joy in watching my oldest son put together the little kinder toys that came inside the chocolate kinder egg.He also put together my youngest son's kinder toys,as i had a hard time understanding the instructions.

As i watched the joy in their faces as they ate the sweet chocolate and played with their new toys i wondered where and when this kinder surprise started,how long have children being enjoying this,who and what is a kinder surprise?does it come from Germany? it sounds like it.
I decided to do some research and found something bigger and better than i had ever imagined.....

Josef Kinder was a shoe maker in a little town called Auzchutittle, Austria.
As a young boy Josef loved to play with toys and eat chocolate.

Josef was also a great gardener and loved to spend his time eating chocolate in his parents garden.

As Josef grew into a young man,he grew tired of the making shoes,it seemed everyone in Austria made shoes and he had never sold a pair of his shoes,his little home was filled with shoes of all sizes,big shoes,little shoes and really little ,tiny shoes.no one wanted shoes it seemed.

One day as Josef worked in his garden his neighbor Hans asked him if he would let young son Olaf,stay with him while he went into town to buy some shoes.h
Josef was more than happy to watch over young Olaf as his father went shopping.

Olaf was an energetic young lad who caused Josef concern as he ran through the house in his dirty little tattered shoes.Olaf clearly hadn't been taught much about manners and house rules.After cleaning up another broken Goblet from the floor,Josef suggested to young Olaf that they go outside and walk in the garden.

Olaf was not much better in the outside either.He seemed to want to destroy every beautiful flower and plant that Josef had so lovingly planted.
Suddenly Josef had an idea,he decided he must keep young Olaf busy with some sort of game.At first he found a stick and told Olaf to catch the stick as he threw it into the air.Olaf wasn't listening and the stick landed on his head.This sent the young difficult child into hysterics.
Josef had to find a way to calm him down,then he remembered he had some chocolate in his house.
Josef ran into the house and returned to the sobbing Olaf with a small piece of delicious milk chocolate.
This calmed the boy down for a moment until he screamed for more and ran into the house trying to find more,screaming for more chocolate.
Sensing the possibility Olaf might cause more damage to his little house and himself,Josef had another idea.
He told Olaf to close his eyes and count to 20 and then go outside and search for more chocolate in the garden,he explained to Olaf that there was many pieces of sweet delicious chocolate hidden amongst the beautiful trees and flowers and if he went outside he may find some.
Olaf counted to ten and then ran outside only after Josef slowly explained this to him a few more times.

Josef had quickly hid a few pieces of his chocolate as Olaf was counting.
Olaf spent the next hour feverishly looking for the illusive chocolate ,Josef was relieved as he saved his house,plants are less expensive to save than a house he thought.
After a few days Olaf's father came back,to fetch him.
Josef was again alone in his garden,
The very next day another neighbor,the shoemaker Helmut ,paid a visit to Josef Kinder's home.
Helmut needed to go into the village to buy his family new shoes as well and told Josef he had heard from Hans,that he took special care of young Olaf and the boy loved his garden,and would he watch his son and daughter,this time he offered Josef payment,in shoes.Josef had many shoes but did not want to upset Helmut with his kind offer.
Soon all of the neighbors had heard of Josef Kinder and his garden.
They began to call it the Kinder Garden.
Josef Kinder had started the first daycare facility in Austria and didn't even realize it.

As the years went by,the children grew tired of digging up dirty chocolate in the garden and became restless.
Josef realized he had to do something or parents would stop bringing their children to the kindergarden,(which later became the now universal kindergarten due to the poor education amongst the mostly uneducated shoemakers).
Then he had an idea,he would put the pieces of chocolate into an old sock.he would call it a Kinder Sock,but the socks quickly became soggy in the dirt.
Kinder finally had enough,he felt that he had done all he could to please the children but ultimately had failed...at least that 's what it said in his suicide note which was in the pocket of the trousers he was wearing when they found his lifeless body behind an oak tree in the kinder garden.

it wasn't until 50 years later that Kinder's cousin Frederick Kinder moved into Josef Kinder's abandoned home.
As Frederick was trying to clean up the overgrown Kinder garden,he came across an old newspaper article in the atrium.Frederick sat and read about the life of Josef Kinder and his death.
He read about the legendary Kinder sock,and laughed at the thought of hiding chocolate in a sock,when it was obvious he should have used a plastic egg shell.
Frederick Kinder quickly went to work marketing the Kinder egg,he realized he needed to give it an edge over other chocolate products so he decided he would fill the egg with a special prize...a tiny shoe!.

Frederick launched the new Kinder Shoe to the chocolate crazed public but he soon became the laughing stock of Bavaria!.he too was later found dead in the kindergarden,a note tucked in his trousers expressing remorse for the whole idea.

Eventually The Metro Chocolate Corporation of Detroit head of marketing Barney Smith bought the rights to the kinder name from Frederick's grandson Rudy for a paltry 500 U.S.. dollars.
They started manufacturing the Kinder Egg but this time Barney decided to honor the the joy and wonder the children had when they first searched the Kindergarten for a "surprise" of hidden chocolate.A surprise would be placed inside the chocolate egg !,a different little toy in each egg!.
This time the Kinder eggs were a huge success,they sold all over the world,making Barney Smith and The Metro Chocolate corporation incredibly wealthy.
The family of the diseased Rudy Kinder later sued unsuccessfully for a share in the Kinder surprise empire.
Barney Smith died in 1987 of old age,happy,satisfied and rich,as he stated in the note he wrote in his will.

And that is the the history of Kindergarten and The Kinder Surprise TM.