A Bag Full Of History

Hoadley's itself dated back to 1889, founded in South Melbourne by English businessman Abel Hoadley — first as a jam company. By 1913 the business had pivoted to confectionery, and over the following half-century built a reputation as the maker of two of Australia's most enduring chocolate icons: the Violet Crumble and the Polly Waffle.

The Violet Crumble is the reason Bertie exists. Every time the Violet Crumble line ran, small shards of honeycomb toffee were left behind — too small to sell as a bar, too tasty to throw away. Someone had the idea of coating them in milk chocolate and moulding them into a novelty shape. The Bertie Beetle was born.

The name "Bertie" wasn't new to Australian ears. Bertie the Beetle was already the cartoon mascot of the Royal Melbourne Show, and had appeared in its advertising. There were older associations too — a series of newspaper children's stories in the 1930s (written by "The Sandman") featured a Bertie Beetle character alongside Will Wattlegum the koala.

To launch the chocolate, Hoadley's enlisted VFL football legend Ron Barassi. The campaign positioned Bertie as the Australian challenger to MacRobertson's (later Cadbury's) Freddo Frog. An urban myth quickly grew that Barassi ate twenty Berties before every match — the secret behind his superhuman play. (Legend has it. Nobody's asked him lately.)

Bertie made his Royal Show debut in 1963, inside the Hoadley's Chocolate Showbag alongside Polly Waffle, Violet Crumble and White Knight. In 1968, Australian artist John Perceval was so taken with the foil wrappers he collected nearly eighty of them and turned them into an artwork.

Then, quietly, in the 1970s, Bertie disappeared from shops. Sometime after Rowntree bought Hoadley's in 1970, the chocolate stopped being available at the corner store — a deal was struck, or the product simply drifted, and Bertie became a Show-only ritual. Even Nestlé, later, couldn't quite pinpoint the year it happened.

Nestlé bought Hoadley-Rowntree in 1988, and Bertie has been theirs ever since. Manufacturing eventually moved to a factory in New Zealand that today produces only two things: Bertie Beetle and Violet Crumble.

In 2016, Bertie went online for the first time. Showbag Shop launched a digital storefront that meant, for the first time in half a century, you didn't have to wait for showtime. In 2018 Bertie began returning to select confectionery shops, and in 2019 Peters Ice Cream launched a Bertie choc-stick through Woolworths.

2023 was the 60th birthday, marked with an 8-showbag range that included 60 Bertie chocolates, two Bertie egg cups and limited-edition birthday cards. But it was also the year a production shortfall left Perth Royal Show without any Bertie bags at all. The reaction was, unsurprisingly, loud.