Trio Chocolate Biscuits

You might not remember the biscuit straight away but one blast of the song from the advert will shock your memory into instant recall…

‘TRIO (this has to be written in capitals as the singer was always SHOUTING), TRIIIIIIO, I WANT A TRIO AND I WANT ONE NOW!’ (Children the length and breadth of Britain must have driven their teachers mad by constantly singing that one in the school playground at the time.)

Ok, come back to you now?! More about the adverts in a minute but first a reminder of the bar itself. Made of three ingredients and partially segmented into three parts (hence the name, see) there was a layer of biscuit, a topping of thick toffee and then a draping of chocolate over that. In truth they were a little bit sickly but when you were a child that was never a problem, was it? They were wrapped in gold foil, with a further bright red label on top of that that had ‘TRIO’ written in big white letters. 

There was also a triple chocolate version which was tasty - albeit with a less distinct taste than the toffee one – chocolate biscuit, topped with chocolate, covered in chocolate. (What’s not to like there then?) This one came enveloped in silver foil, with a blue wrapper.

And now it’s time to meet Susie. Susie was one of three characters that featured in the adverts, a small girl with a big mouth, she was constantly interrupting the two laidback beatniks who were trying to play their music on the guitar and tom toms in peace and extol the virtues of the Trio…quietly. Wherever they were Susie always turned up (they even tried escaping to the Arctic on one occasion but she still found them…), also praising the bar…but much, much louder.

‘TRIO….TRIIIIIIIO, I want a Trio and I want one NOW! Not one, not two but three things in it: a chocolatey biscuit and a toffee taste too.’ (Schools in the

There were various different scenarios that Susie turned up in (once in a hot air balloon) and occasionally the hippies got the better of her. During her time in the Trio ads Susie was barricaded into a sound proof booth and also had the bongos stuffed into her enormous mouth to shut her up, although there was one time that her maverick methods of telling us just how good a Trio was actually made sense to her co-stars.

Hippy one (voiced by the smooth tones of Derek Griffiths) talks to the camera ‘Hey, Susie thinks everything should be covered in real milk chocolate, just like a Trio. Personally I think….(Susie then uses an enormous hose to cover the pair of them in chocolate and he tastes it)….she’s got a point, man, I mean, it’s not a bad idea…’

Griffiths wasn’t the only famous voice to feature; the final voiceover (‘No three things are quite as good together as a…(Susie interrupts) TRIIIIIIIIIIIOOO!’) was provided by John Peel.

Made by Jacob’s (the cracker people) through the 1980s and 90s it was sadly consigned to Snack Heaven a while ago – but if you’re missing it you could always contact the man who made the tabloids after proudly constructing a three foot version of the Trio bar. However nice he thought that particular chocolate bar was that clearly smacks of somebody with too much time on their hands…