The Yorkie bar celebrates its 40th birthday this month but Nestlé has revealed the bar almost ended up with a very different name and image - and was almost not launched at all.

The company has released previously unseen images of alternative bars which could have been launched in its place by its York predecessor, Rowntree Mackintosh.

Archivist and historian Alex Hutchinson has uncovered a portfolio of artwork showing that the bar - launched in 1976 to help the Rowntree get into the solid chocolate bar sector- was originally going to be called Rations and have a camouflage pattern on both the bar and the wrapper.

York Press:

Other names included Jones or O’Hara and other lines considered included:

  • Variety, a port and nut chocolate bar with a music hall theme, which may have been influenced the success of a TV show called The Good Old Days, filmed at Leeds City Varieties
  • Chocolate County, a humbug and treacle flavour chocolate
  • Boulevard, a coffee and cognac bar in a carton
  • Pick-me-up, a peanut bar

Yorkie went on to be heavily promoted as the truckers' favourite chocolate bar and Nestlé, which bought the brand as part of Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988, now makes 85.7 million Yorkie bars at the York factory each year.

Ms Hutchinson said: “It’s fascinating to see how close Yorkie came to being called Jones or O’Hara. With hindsight the Yorkie name seems so perfect it’s almost impossible to imagine it being called anything else."

>>> FLASHBACK: 10 lost chocolate classics - which do you miss most?

She added that Rowntree’s had originally been among the market leaders of block chocolate makers back in the roaring Twenties, with its York chocolate range, including York Motoring.

"Advertised by the eponymous Plain Mr York cartoon, the York brand fell out of favour after the Second World War, and the line was dropped in 1966."