Nestlé KitKat Formula 1 Tin - 132g

It started as a Chocolate Crisp

In 1935 Rowntree's of York launched a four-finger wafer bar called Chocolate Crisp. Not the catchiest name ever, and within a couple of years somebody fixed it: Kit Kat. Then, in the late 1950s, came 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat', one of Britain's best-known confectionery catchphrases. You have probably just said it in your head. Everyone does. Kit Kat is still made at Nestlé's factory on Haxby Road in York, which is a pleasing thing to know the next time you snap one.

York, Halifax and a Swiss pharmacist

Rowntree's goes back to 1862, when Henry Isaac Rowntree bought a cocoa and chocolate business in York. In 1969 it merged with Mackintosh's of Halifax, West Yorkshire, the people behind Quality Street, to form Rowntree Mackintosh. Two Yorkshire firms, one very crowded sweet shelf. Nestlé bought the lot in 1988. Nestlé itself began with Henri Nestlé, a German-born pharmacist in Vevey, Switzerland, who developed an infant food called Farine Lactée in 1867.

Mind the rest of the family

That 1988 deal brought Kit Kat into Nestlé's British portfolio alongside Quality Street, Smarties, Rolo and Aero, which reads like the sweet shelf of every corner shop you ever walked past on the way home from school. Smarties arrived from Rowntree's in 1937. Kit Kat is the one that never needed an occasion, just a kettle and ten minutes nobody could take off you.