Chocolate sweetens Swiss stamps

The chocolate stamps will be calorie-free

ZURICH, Switzerland -- Swiss mailboxes will be smelling sweeter next week with the advent of chocolate-scented postage stamps for letters and packages.

Besides smelling like chocolate, the new brown stamps look like they are made from the confection and will be sold in blocks of four or 15 on paper designed to look like a foil candy wrapping.

Though tempting, the stamps are calorie-free and their scent is purely artificial, stored in millions of minute pellets held on by a slim layer of varnish.

Swiss Post initially mulled plans to issue chocolate-flavoured stamps, but they were dropped for hygienic reasons and because extensive licking could remove the adhesive and cause the stamps to disintegrate.

Swiss Post announced on Wednesday that the stamps marking the centenary of Chocosuisse, the association of chocolate makers and importers, would be valid from May 9.

A Swiss Post spokesman told Reuters he expected the stamps would actually be used since buyers stood in such long queues to snap up last year's knitted stamps -- another Swiss Post world premiere.

"The feedback has been enormous -- this does not happen every time we issue a stamp. But then chocolate is one of the Swiss cliches just like the Alps, clocks and cheese," he said.

Swiss Post

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