Ordinary Gweilo

I can’t be the only person to have noticed that a fairly well-known brand from the UK is now available in Hong Kong – Wall’s Ice Cream. The story behind this turns out to be slightly stranger than I had expected.

Mountain Cream is a familiar name in Hong Kong. What I hadn’t realized was that it used to be owned by AS Watson (yes, it’s Li Ka Shing’s Hutchison group again) but was acquired by Unilever about 5 years ago, whereupon they changed the logo to be the same as all their other ice cream brands worldwide.

When I first saw this logo I thought it looked familiar but I couldn’t immediately place it. In case you’re thinking I must be incredibly stupid, the explanation is that the logo was on a beach umbrella next to a swimming pool, with no ice cream anywhere in sight.

Unilever sell the same stuff all over the world, but with different brand names. So what you buy in the UK as Wall’s Ice Cream, you can buy in much of Europe as Carte d’Or (I think) or in Hong Kong as Mountain Cream. What I hadn’t realized was that the Wall’s brand was launched (very successfully) 10 years ago in China .

Now Unilever seem to be launching Walls as a premium brand in Hong Kong, alongside Mountain Cream. Predictably enough, the ice cream now being sold in Hong Kong under the Wall’s name is manufactured in China. So what I thought was a famous British brand actually turns out to be Chinese ice cream!

It’s a small world.