Freddo

Freddo links to the MacRobertson’s Confectionery Company est 1880 and to Macpherson Robertson, a visionary entrepreneur who first started out as a boy cooking up sugar confectionery in an improvised boiler in the family home, selling door to door, and eventually going on to create the original Freddo Frog and other iconic Australian chocolates such as Colombines, Old Gold and Cherry Ripe. In doing so he built the largest confectionery manufacturer in the Southern hemisphere until the Cadbury takeover in 1967.

This little frog is a wink to the ingenuity of inspired entrepreneurs that led to a building boon and the industrial “Heyday” of the late 1800s and also to an iconic philanthropist who (amongst many other contributions) funded Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1929 expedition to the Antarctic and also donated gifts to the people of Victoria including the MacRobertson bridge, The National Herbarium, The MacRobertson Fountain and The MacRobertson Girls’ High School.

Special thanks to Collingwood Historical Society for their support in my research and to John Willis, Frog collector extraordinaire, for the generous loan of his rare MacRobertson’s Freddo Frog model.