The daughter of the man who invented Freddo Frog has claimed he would be ‘rolling in his grave’ over the current price of the chocolate treat.
Leonie Lewis’s father Harry Melbourne first came up with the idea of the edible amphibian as a teenager while working for an Australian confectionary company MacRobertson’s almost a decade ago.
The young Brit overheard one of his bosses talking about selling a new chocolate bar in the shape of a mouse and, unprovoked, decided to give his own thoughts.
‘He said children are scared of mice, so why not a frog? Because kids go down to the lake and catch tadpoles,’ Leonie told Sky News.
And just like that the cult favourite chocolate bar – which even adopted the name of Harry’s ‘best mate’ Fred – was born.
His newfound fame came much to the delight of Harry’s daughter Leonie, who would often wait for her father to come home from work with boxes of Freddos for their family to feast on.
But since his death in 2007, she has vowed to never to buy one again after prices for the bar shot up in recent years – with some being sold for as much as £1 in the UK.
‘He’d roll over in his grave if he could see it now; he’d be disgusted. It was a penny chocolate,’ Leonie told Sky News.
The daughter of Harry Melbourne (pictured) – the man who invented Freddo The Frog – has claimed he would be ‘rolling in his grave’ over the current price of the chocolate treat
The Freddo bar was spotted selling for £1 at a WHSmith store in Carlisle earlier this year
She added that he had been ‘disgusted with how small it is now’ and how much shops charge for it.
Leonie shares the same fury as thousands of other Freddo fans who have witnessed the price of the once-10p chocolate frog rise to as much as £1 earlier this year.
A post of the popular lunchbox snack on Reddit showed a Freddo selling for £1 at a WHSmith store in Carlisle.
Although it is still available for less in many shops, the price represents a staggering tenfold increase since the bar returned to shop shelves 20 years ago.
Lovers of the miniature amphibian sweet were quick to vent their rage online, with one saying: ‘£1 for a Freddo is disgusting. Daylight robbery at its finest!’
Another angered fan raged: ‘Name and shame where this atrocity has occurred.’
One outraged lover of the chocolate even rounded on Chancellor Rachel Reeves over the Freddo’s ‘snackflation’.
‘Freddo’s are now a quid. Wtf is going on in this country? @RachelReevesMP, you should resign,’ they wrote on X.
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Freddo was launched in the UK by legendary British chocolatier Cadbury in 1973 but was withdraw in 1974.
The bar, which first originated in Australia, was later relaunched in 1994 at a price of 10p, proving to be a smash hit lunchbox treat.
The cost of the beloved bar remained the same for 11 years, until in 2005, it started to slowly increase 2p a year in price.
By 2016, the 95 calorie bar cost 25p.
However, since then, its cost has ballooned rapidly, much to the dismay of fans.
In 2017, the price rose to 30p. Five years later, in 2022, a Freddo was seen being sold for 49p at WHSmith in Liverpool.
The £1 bar in Carlisle is higher than in major retailers like Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Asda, which sell the chocolate snack for 30p, 40p and 34p respectively.
But this is still more than if the cost of Freddos had only kept pace with inflation more widely, which would see them priced at a mere 19p.
