Bring Back Kunzle Showboats

A little help, if you could, please: I’ve been trying everywhere in my travels through London to buy Kunzle cakes for my wife, who loved them as a child.

But it seems nobody stocks them any more, so I turned to the internet to do a little research and have found your website.

Can Kunzle cakes actually be bought anywhere in London now?

Thank you in anticipation for your help,

It was a very sad day for Britain when the sale of Kunzle Cakes was discontinued. I have failed to find anything which remotely compares with the delicious cakes enjoyed by families in my childhood. Sundays have never been the same. Please bring them back asap.

I well remember the Kunzle cakes. They were always on sale in the cafeteria at the local dance hall in Sleaford Lincolnshire.The Corn Exchange-which was the dance hall in that town-was very popular in the 1950’s;all the teenagers from the villages around Sleaford used to decend on the town every Saturday Night for the weekly “hop”. The resident band was “The Billy Cowell Dance Band”.He was very well liked and people speak affectionately of him to this day.

Apart from the weekly dance, during the year more specialised dances were held;such as The Farmers Ball,The Police Ball,The Hunt Ball and the Licence Victuallers Ball etc. On these occasions it was usual that one of the big bands of the day would be hired to play for the evening; Victor Sylvester,Ted Heath,Harry Gold to name but a few.

But there was always one thing we,who attended the dances,could be sure of and that was an abundance of Kunzle Cakes to choose from in the cafeteria! The price in those days was 6d. (six old pence) each and what value!! I do wish Kunzle Cakes were still available.

Regards,

A kunzle Fancier.

My sister and I were talking about Kunzle cakes and saying how wonderful they were! We thoroughly support you efforts in trying to get them back on the market again. Good luck

When Christian Kunzle made cakes at the House of Commons, could he have foreseen that, by the Sixties, some 40,000 Showboat cakes – never mind the other sorts – would come off the production line every week? They were an odd sort of product: not so much a cake (small, chocolatey, filled with a butter-cream and decorated by hand with a squiggle) as a gesture of benevolent luxury. To be given a Kunzle cake was to be reassured that one mattered.

Thank God! So it wasn’t some dream I had…they tried to tell me I had made it up!

The scene – dinner last night with 6 other 35-45 year olds who, obviously, were neglected as children. Nobody had ever heard of Kunzle Showboats, let alone experienced the sheer delight of even seeing one of these works of art. I was accused of all manner of evil….including poor potty training. But I knew I could find proof, I knew you were out there. Anybody who has been ‘touched’ by one of these amazing memories of childhood, will NEVER forget. I blame the anti- E number lobby…. My one concern….like one’s first kiss….will we ever be able to bring back the magic???

When Lyons bought Kunzles I was the Project Engineer given the job of buying a new chocolate moulding machine. At Garrets Green factory Kunzle had choc. moulding 2 machines both old-both Danish, an Aaasted and a Jenson.

This factory was to be closed and everything moved to the other one in the group, which was in Smethwick- the old Scribona Fullers bakery. it must have been around 1973

I went to Denmark and Germany and eventually we bought a Bindler Mouding machine which was a huge rectangular loose mould machine, with nickel plated moulds for the 4 shapes. The whole project of installation in an air-conditioned area, -we build internal rooms and then the long conveyors where they were hand filled with Genoese sponge, butter cream and decorate.

There were 10 ladies each side-a total of 40 girls alone . The total crew for the whole line must have been about 55, so it was incredibly labour intensive.

The move to Smethwick must have cost around £150,000 and remember this was around 1973. The machinery was far from perfect. I recall the moulds tended to slip out of position in the coolers and cause smash-ups.

Anyway the line ran and production was ok and they were packed in singles x 24 to a carton, in 4’s and also in 6’s – so there was a lot of cartoning and over-machinery as well which we moved.

A few years later and Lyons decided to move all their 4 or 5 factories into one huge facility in Yorkshire. Naturally I got the job of sorting out the move. The product was stockpiled but the job could never be done quickly and I guess they were all sold and taken off the shelve for a few months.

We built a new room to be air conditioned under the mezzanine, and dismantled and re-installed the Bindler moulder, and also moved the 15 ton chocolate tanks, all the jacketed piping and the other specialist chocolate machinery.

When the shells were de-moulded the moulds were inverted so the shells, by then cooled so they shrunk, were hit with automatic nylon faced hammers. Noise regulations meant this noise had to be muted and I made an acoustic hood to place over this area, but the hood had to lifted regularly so we put a beam and electric hoist in the ceiling to do this, and then of course such lifting equipment has to have a safety certificate every year, so more admin cost!

We still had the huge crew of girls filling the shells. We spent time considering how to automate the whole thing. Change the cake to rice crispies so they could be metered automatically, etc. We ended up with a huge new machine -on paper only- I can’t remember what it would have cost to make but the Directors would never have authorised it. Chocolate prices were always rising. They did trials on a less expensive grade of chocolate, moving the cocoa solid % lower; maybe this lost sales and slowly the product died. Lyons killed it off long before RHM and Kipling came in the scene.

I went to Australia for the firm in Sept 1977. By then the line was running. I think it only lasted there about 2 years. So I hope I have given you some facts about Showboats and there is no chance that the product will ever return. The economics just don’t add up.

I am now retired and live in N.W. London. Have you had comments from any others like me who know the inside story?

I and my brother remember eating Kunzle cakes in the forties and fifties when we lived in Barrow in Furness. Easily the best cakes I have ever tasted. If only we were able to buy them again you would be guaranteed two loyal customers

Was alerted to your website by the webmaster of the J. Lyons & Co. website. I do not have any good images of Kunzle cakes and have only been able to identify this one. It appeared in the house journal Lyons Mail in August 1970. The journal at this time was a tabloid sized newspaper and the pictures were pretty awful. This might be better than nothing until you get something better. Best wishes with your endeavours

I actually visited the Garret’s Green, Birmingham factory and saw the Showboat plant in operation, and I know the project engineer who later re-commissioned the whole plant at the Lyons Carlton Bakery at Barnsley, Yorks. It was a very specialized automated plant. You could ask Carlton if the plant is still there in mothballs. It would make a big difference to your chances of getting production re-started. All the best with the Showboat campaign. Keep in touch.