Cottage cheese and chocolate – the story of Túró Rudi

Túró Rudi is quite a unique type of dessert in Hungary and some neighboring countries. It is a chocolate bar filled with a dairy cream resembling to cottage cheese, from which it received its name (“túró” means cottage cheese in Hungarian, while “Rudi” can both refer to “rod” or the nickname of Rudolf). Its special taste and iconic packaging (white with red dots) is well known by Hungarians and tourists alike.

The history of Pöttyös Túró Rudi began in 1954 when three Hungarian experts of the dairy industry went to the USSR to study the Soviet dairy. They saw a product which is considered to be the predecessor of Túró Rudi, as Pottyos.hu claims.

Manager of the milk factory in Erzsébetváros Rudolf Mandeville received a request to develop the Soviet product, adding some Hungarian taste to it. He successfully adapted the “cottage cheese cupcake”. The next issue was the marketing of the product.

There were no marketing experts at that time, so a young psychologist, Sándor Klein got the task of designing a profile for the advertisements.

He named the product Túró Rudi and he also came up with the idea of the red dotted packaging. The original packaging, which depicted the head of a little girl, was created by two of Klein’s students, according to Penzcentrum.

Production began in Budapest in 1968, but this factory was in function only for a short time. The first production machinery — which was made of wood — was transported to Szabolcs county.

Though Túró Rudi had a very short expiration time — about three days — it did not mean any problem as the product was always sold in a very short time.