Nestlé Crunch welcomes you to a park full of giddy frolickers. The Lindt site could be confused with that of a fancy restaurant: a man in a chef's hat gingerly inspects a confection beside the tagline "Share our maître chocolatiers' passion for chocolate." And

Compared with these, the Toblerone homepage is practically barren. There are no cartoon characters, no flashy graphics, no highfalutin pretensions. On a white background appears a Toblerone bar, its distinctive yellow box and silver foiled peeled back just enough to reveal the candy's famous jagged ridges—a shape almost as iconic as the "hobble-skirt," Coca-Cola bottle, or the double-patty, triple-bun stacking of a Big Mac.

A broken wedge, baring bits of embedded nougat, faces the viewer. Just above the candy is a vertical menu of five sections, which unlike most chocolate-brand sites contain neither "shop" nor "recipes." The top menu item links to a section that describes the ingredients and manufacture of Toblerone, but the item isn't called "About Us." Rather, it reads: "This is chocolate."

Not "This is our chocolate" or "This is a kind of chocolate" but a declaration that could serve as a subtle gauntlet, thrown in the direction of the other chocolate players: This. Is. Chocolate.

The interior of the site covers much of the same ground as other chocolate-brand sites—including a few recipes—but in a way that belies the simple elegance of Toblerone itself. Each page is brief, with most copy barely going beyond the "fold." For those who like tracking the evolution of a brand, Toblerone provides a detailed list of major changes during its near-century of existence, from the introduction of new flavors to the tweaking of its packaging.

Like most iconic brands that can be copied with little difficulty—its main ingredients are milk, cocoa, almond nougat, and honey—Toblerone takes its brand integrity seriously: the Toblerone name, shape, and packaging are all trademarked, and the manufacturing process is patented. (In stressing this, the company allows one to download a PDF of the original patent document from 1909.)

In this regard, the branding message is strong, but a deeper look raises a few issues.

The brand is owned by Kraft Foods (Switzerland-based Kraft Foods AG, to be accurate), but you'd barely know it: the site is bereft of Kraft logos, proving the company is content to let the Toblerone brand stand on its own. Which is admirable, but although the parent company is mentioned in fine print and legal copy, there are no links from the Toblerone site to any of the other Kraft sites. One could argue that there should be at least some mention of Kraft's other confectionary products.

When investigating how Toblerone is promoted on the Kraft sites, one finds inconsistency. The main Kraft corporate site lists Toblerlone in three places within its Brands section: on a long list of US brands, with no image but a link to toblerone.com; on a similar list of Canadian brands with no link (no brands on this list have any links); and on its international confectionary brands page, where it warrants a one-sentence mention on a list of a dozen other chocolate brands. There is a link to the Toblerone site here—but it's the German-language version.

Toblerone does enjoy prominence on the (German-language) Kraft Foods Switzerland homepage, however—it's still Swiss-made, after all—and has its own, extensive products page.

We also found Toblerone mentioned on www.kraftfoods.com, a Kraft recipes site. Before we go further, let's digress and review:

• kraft.com is the Kraft Foods corporate page
• kraftfoods.com is the recipes page
• kraftfoods.ch is the Kraft Foods AG corporate page, not the Swiss/German version of the Kraft recipes page; one would assume that this site should actually be kraft.ch, but it isn't, because:
• kraft.ch belongs to a Zurich-based attorney

On kraftfoods.com, if you type "toblerone" into the search field you can track down five recipes involving a Toblerone bar. These are not the same recipes found on the Toblerone site, though. Does this criticism sound a little nitpicky? Perhaps, but if you're a fan of the brand—and Toblerone is a brand with devotees—how would you feel if you thought that toblerone.com was the beginning and the end of the brand only to later learn you were missing out on the recipe for Hedgehog "Cake"?

Overall, the design of Toblerone’s website might be as smooth as its chocolate, but in terms of a coordinated branding message, there are a few bumps reminiscent of the candy, too.