GB Glace (originally Glace-Bolaget until 1991) is the largest ice cream company in Sweden. It was founded in 1942, and was purchased by the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever in 1996. Besides its own traditional brands, it now produces many of the same products as other Unilever Heartbrand subsidiaries, such as Langnese in Germany.
In 2005, the Swedish company was criticized by the Centre against Racism and Related Intolerance after launching an advertising campaign introducing their new line of ice cream bars, the Nogger Black, which is an addition to their existing “Nogger” ice cream product. The original Nogger is a vanilla ice cream bar with a nougat filling and chocolate shell, whereas the Nogger Black substitutes toffee in lieu of the nougat center and encases the bar in a salty, black liquorice outer shell rather than chocolate; hence the name Nogger Black. Nogger Black has a logotype that looks like graffiti. Petronella Warg, GB Glace’s information officer, reported that the first Nogger ice cream bar had been marketed since 1979, its name derived from the nougat filling.
The criticism was mainly aimed at an advert where the slogan “Nogger + liquorice = true” (a Swedish equivalent to “Nogger ♥ liquorice”) was written in white chalk on asphalt. Stig Wallin – chairman of the centre – misread the slogan as “Nigger + liquorice” and said “It’s impossible not to see this as an allusion to racism”. The centre urged for a boycott of the company if they did not withdraw the campaign. Slate writer Timothy Noah also criticized the product.
