Easter and The mystery of missing Kinder Surprise Egg

Easter traditions are as colorful as the brightly painted easter eggs.

What I have learned by now from my husband and my American family, their Easter traditions used to include traveling to the family farm (when my husband was still a child) to spend the Easter with grand-parents and the extended family. They would visit the church with the whole family. Easter weekend also included egg hunt and eventually the Easter bunny also came for a visit. Easter bunny comes with a basket filled with hay and hidden Easter goodies.

Egg hunt most often means plastic eggs hidden in different places (to keep the chocolate from melting, especially in the Southern states), inside there are smaller toys, mini Easter eggs and candies. Alternatively painted eggs hidden in the house, garden, beach, etc.

According to some sources I checked, the Easter Bunny (Osterhase), is an interesting mammal...it lays eggs, as well as the hiding of eggs originally landed to US with the German immigrants around 1700. I knew these traditions from my years in Germany and it is really interesting to see how with the immigration so many colorful traditions have found their solid place in the US holiday traditions.

Out of all the egg variation one can find here, there is one major thing missing though...the surprise eggs. My all time favorite, Kinder Surprise Egg, was nowhere to be found in the mainstream grocery stores. Some speciality stores, specialized in import, e.g. Phoenicia or Specs, had some but ran out.

I was wondering why would THE Egg of all Easter Eggs, which is eaten across Europe, be missing from a consumer targeted country like US? After digging into it, I found interesting history.

The story of the Kinder Surprise egg started in 1974 in Italy. Since then the little surprise egg took over the world, one country at the time. Bringing joy to young and young at heart :)
Due to the US Federal Food, drug and cosmetics act dating back to1938 it was not allowed to sell confectionary including a non-food item embedded inside, unless the part had a functional value. Due to missing to read the texts of the age restrictions the egg was banned from US. For a while there was even a fine if anyone tried to bring the Kinder Surprise eggs into the country e.g. in their luggage.
The few cases, where public info exists, fines were between 300 - 2500 $ per egg.

Finally in 2013 the Kinder Surprise Egg was allowed to enter the US market as a result of failed attempt to succeed with the petition with the aim to ban import and sales of Kinder Surprise Eggs. That one luckily never got enough signatures. Thus, now Kinder Surprise Eggs are fully legal in US...but they can for now only be seen at the stores specialized for import goods. Hoping that some years from now they would not be such a rare commodity anymore. Because they are so good!!!

When I was living in Germany (as an young adult) I sometimes bought myself and my friends Kinder Surprise Egg to have it as the dessert after breakfast on Sunday. Just because one should have happy surprises throughout the year. I recall sitting on the beach with a friend on summer weekend, eating our Kinder Surprise eggs and enjoying the day. My mind started racing the path of its own...I started wondering how many engineers they need to design all the toys & games for the eggs and how many test cycles they have to go through to find the right balance for size, safety and not the least excitement. I think I would love to work for the department responsible for creating the surprises and testing them :)

Back from the egg to the....witch! As in Finland the Easter looks little different than in US, or Germany for that matter. Finnish Easter tradition is a mixture of old pagan traditions and the symbolics brought in with the orthodox church. Finland has only about 1% of population belonging to the orthodox church, thus the rest of Easter from religious perspective is mainly Evangelic Lutheran. In Finnish practical terms it means that the role of church is not in the center of the events.

On Palm Sunday the Finnish children dress up as witches and tour around the neighborhood casting the spell to all, who allow them to do so. Prior to that they have decorated several pussy willow branches with colorful decorations (feathers, paper ornaments, etc.). Those are the wands which they do the spell with and leave it to the receiver, in return for candy.
I remember when I moved back to Finland in 2007, all the years from there onwards the door bell rang first time at 10 am (the neighbors' kids knew I was up early during weekends)...and it continued ringing all the way till about 3 pm. As a result I had lovely bouquet of colorful branches and had been thoroughly casted with well being spells.

The Easter weekend itself is also a fun one, cause it is a long weekend. Good Friday (in Finnish Pitkäperjantai "Long Friday") and Easter Monday are public holidays. Most of the shops are closed all 4 days, only the big grocery stores (note big in Finnish context means only grocery stores beyond 400m2 / 4000ft2) are allowed to stay open some hours. I like that limitation, as it calms things down. Lot of people take the time to visit their relatives or many use this opportunity to go for the last ski trip for the season to Finnish Lapland or abroad. Some, like my brother and sister-in-law, use this weekend to prepare their yacht for the summer season. The spring is starting to show and, for most Finns, Easter marks the end to the long dark winter and start of spring season. Some even grow Easter grass (normal garden grass) on a plate or basket and put little chick decoration on it.

Easter weekend dinners are around lamb and vegetables. Some modern cooks might cook wild hare instead of lamb. Dessert is either mämmi, a sweet rye Jell-o like desert, Pasha (from the Russian traditions and more among the orthodox community), dessert made of quark / curd and something fruity to bring the spring colors to the table.

Mämmi is something, which is a must taste for foreigners, at least once. But do not think ALL
Finns love it. My husband got to spend one Easter by himself in Finland, as I was going for a girls trip with one of my good friends to Singapore and Bali. I prepared him for everything, he knew what to do and say when the witches came and he was exploring the Finnish cuisine. When I got home from the trip he proudly announced that he had saved half a box of mämmi for me :) Great! I was busy thinking how to tell him nicely that I do not normally eat mämmi and if I do, maximum one small bowl. He was highly confused...as he had read somewhere that ALL Finns love mämmi. Mämmi is one of those foods that you either love it, or you despise it. Do not judge it though only based on the somewhat enquiring looks of it.

I have been really awed to see how 2nd / 3rd generation American Finns post to Facebook community pictures of home made mämmi. Respect!

Eggs are of course solid part of Finnish Easter too. Kinder Surprise eggs are sold in every Finnish grocery store :) but we have our own speciality egg. Fazer has made a business of reusing empty egg shells from baking to fill them with chocolate. This delicacy is called Mignon egg.

Hyvää pääsiäistä! Glad Påsk! Fröhliche Ostern! Joyeuses pâques! Feliz Pascua! Happy Easter to one and all! May The joy of spring and New beginnings fill this weekend.