They say true beauty is on the inside, which is especially true when considering chocolate bars. But there’s no arguing that a beautifully designed package also elevates the chocolate-eating experience, and these designs are almost gorgeous enough to keep you from tearing them open, golden ticket pending or not.
But not quite. From Iceland to Vietnam, here are a few of the chocolate wrappers that always catch our eye.
Everyone Loves a Brooklyn Wrapper
Raaka Chocolate, founded by Ryan Cheney and Nate Hodge, is a Red Hook, Brooklyn-based company. Cheney and Hodge make an array of bars with beans sourced from Bolivia, Madagascar, Belize, and the Dominican Republic, and the bars are wrapped in paper designed by Elissa Barbieri at Loop.
Neon New Zealand Zing
Local designers Gina Kiel and Malarky make Wellington Chocolate Factory chocolate bars very easy on the eyes.
Ho Chi Min’s Marou
Vietnam’s single-origin Marou Chocolate matches the color of their wrappers to the hue of the cacao pods that go into their bars.
Canada’s Camino
Camino is an Ottawa-based company owned by La Siembra Co-operative, which was established in 1999. Three years later, La Siembra became the first registered importers of Fairtrade Certified cocoa and sugar in North America.
From Reykjavík with Love
Iceland’s Omnom uses a thick paper stock for their wrappers, which are designed to open and function as a serving tray.
From Wine to Chocolate
Josh Bahen, founder of Bahen & Co., is a farmer at heart. He was a winemaker before he founded the company and he runs it from his family’s farm in Margaret River, Western Australia.
If it Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It
Rococo Chocolates is a London-based company that’s been in operation since 1983, when founder and designer Chantal Coady opened her first store in Chelsea.
Valerie Confections Mixes Things Up
Valerie Confections was founded in 2004. Founders Valerie Gordon and Stan Weightman Jr. introduced the Good Mix bar in 2013 and the Hot Good Mix bar in 2014, and the wrappers for each were designed in collaboration with Commune Design. These wrappers don’t have a golden ticket, but they do have a surprise inside: vintage-style nudes to keep your eyes off the prize.
Big Balloons and Crazy Chocolate
When Tatiana Sánchez founded Unelefante in 2012, she did so with a line of large balloons. It wasn’t until a collaboration with master chocolatier Jorge Llanderal shortly after that Sánchez introduced her hand-painted bars and wrappers.