As you look forward to a long weekend, spare a thought for the Easter Bunny. The poor soul will be flat-out by Easter Monday, having dispatched multi-coloured eggs far and wide, ready for the frenzy of chocolate consumption that is Easter.

1. pet plan.com.au http://www.petplan.com.au/blog/pet-insurance/where-did-the-easter-bunny-come-from/
by Petplan Australia
Where did the Easter Bunny come from?
As you look forward to a long weekend, spare a thought for the Easter Bunny. The poor soul
will be flat-out by Easter Monday, having dispatched multi-coloured eggs far and wide, ready
for the frenzy of chocolate consumption that is Easter.But where did this mysterious figure
come from? Here, Sophie Mackenzie looks into the famous rabbit’s origins.
We’ve all heard the expression ‘breeding like rabbits’,
and it’s thanks to their fecundity that the creatures
have come to symbolise new life. So it’s come to pass
that rabbits are associated with springtime, which of
course is when Easter falls.
The legend of a rabbit bringing sweets to children at
Easter is believed to date back to 16th-century
Germany, when the first edible bunnies were made
from pastry. It wasn’t until the invention of milk
chocolate and advances in moulding technology in the
early 20th century that chocolate bunnies hopped on
to the scene.
Eggs, another symbol of fertility, have been given as Easter gifts for far longer. There’s a record in
the 1,307 household accounts of King Edward I for an order of ‘450 eggs, to be boiled and dyed or
covered with gold leaf’, and the Fabergé eggs that were presented to the Russian Tsar and Tsarina
in the 19th century are still treasured by collectors today.
The Easter Bunny doesn’t have a monopoly on distribution.Around the world, other animals are
associated with the task. In Switzerland, Easter eggs are delivered by a cuckoo, in Sweden by a hare
and in parts of Germany by a fox. In Australia, where wild rabbits are considered to be pests, a
chocolate company has introduced the idea of the ‘Easter Bilby’, an endangered marsupial.
EGGS-TRAORDINARY EASTER FACTS
We buy more chocolate at Easter than at almost any other time of the year. The festival
surpasses Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Mother’s Day, and is second only to Christmas in
terms of consumption.
Most Easter bunnies are hollow, but there is a growing market for solid bunnies, which are
cheaper to manufacture and less fragile to transport.
As the market for Easter chocolate has grown,
bunnies have been produced in more and more
different guises. There have been ballerina bunnies,
astronaut bunnies, bunnies that glow in the dark and
bunnies with exotic flavoured fillings
In 2006, Harrods commissioned a replica of Lindt’s
iconic bunny – except their version was crafted from
solid gold, adorned with rubies, citrine, topaz and

2. diamonds, and valued at about £20,000
Last year, Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt won an eight-year-long legal battle to stop an
Austrian competitor making gold foil-wrapped rabbits similar to its own
As well as bunnies and eggs, chocolate chicks are popular, and Americans have a soft spot for
Easter jellybeans, which are produced in limited-edition pastel colours
The world’s biggest chocolate bunny was a replica of the well known Duracell mascot,
produced by the South African sculptor Harry Johnson in 2010. The bunny, which was 3.82m tall
and weighed 2,721kg, was displayed for a week before being donated to a charity for
underprivileged children
About 80% of chocolate-lovers eat their bunnies’ ears first, with 5% starting at the feet and
4% going in at the tail. Who knows what the other 11% do…
What will you and your pet be getting up to this Easter? Let us know in the comments box below.