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- NOTE: This article appeared
in the January/February 1999 edition of Speak Magazine, a San Francisco
based A4 glossy magazine which covers stories and identities of interest
from all over the world as well as continental USA. Journalistic license
was employed with some of the quotes attributed to me!
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- Australian Rob Leong can tell you where to find a Boof,
Ditty or a Rumble. He can explain the difference between a kingfisher and
a regular kookaburra. And he can tell you whether a Golden Platypus is
really worth $US300.
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- Boof, Ditty, Rumble and the coveted Golden Platypus are
all part of the Cadbury candy company's Yowie line. And Yowies, two-inch
tall chocolate candies, modeled on a big, hairy, mythical Australian creature
(believed to be a cousin of the Himalyan yeti or North American sasquatch)
have taken Australia by storm. Ever since they were launched in 1997, they
have dominated the children's candy market Down Under.
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- Few know Yowies better than Leong, a thirty-four-year-old
businessman in Prahran, Australia. Leong manages Yowie.com and possesses
the email address yowieman@hotmail.com, and spends hours each week answering
questions about Yowies.
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- Although Yowies started as a kid fave, Leong estimates
that grownups now do eighty percent of the buying. And that can get expensive
- while Yowies retail for seventy-five cents a piece (US), peple have paid
over US$300 for a single Yowie. Leong adds that it's not uncommon for an
adult to go directly to a wholesaler and buy forty to one hundred and sixty
Yowies. After her seven-year-old daughter bought twelve Yowies, Leanne
Butler, a health worker in Bendigo, tok over as the family's Yowie maniac.
"I have approximately three hundred Yowies, and counting," she
says.
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- Leong notes that, "Parents think nothing of buying
fifty Yowies at a time." He theorizes that they're willing to buy
so many of these chocolates because Yowies are educational. Inside each
Yowie is an assemble-it-yourself plastic bush animal - such as a wombat
or koala - and information about endangered species. "You could never
shove environmentalism down most kids throats," says Leong. "But
with Yowies, kids are learning by default."
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- As is he. Like many Australians, Leong is in the Yowie
biz to make money. But he's also become a native species expert of sorts,
as he's often called upon to answer questions such as: "How can I
tell the difference between a dingo and a bright orange dingo?"
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- If Yowies remain popular, Leong might become a veritable
zoologist, as well as a successful businessman. He, for one, wouldn't mind
if the Yowie concept were imported to other countries, such as Canada.
"A Maple bear Yowie," he says, "would be awesome."
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