The Penguin Biscuit: P-p-p-pick Up a Glasgow Classic

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The 1932 launch date and the 1965 takeover are well supported; Grace's Guide cites The Times of 21 January 1965 for the acquisition. Much else is thinner. The founder's name is spelled three ways. The Antwerp inspiration story comes from secondary brand histories. One modern company chronology is said to date Penguin's arrival at McVitie's to 1946, which cannot be right if the Macdonald firm stayed independent until 1965, and this card does not use it. Sales figures for Penguin alone are not published, so none are given here. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) has no entry on the Penguin and is used only for the background history of the British biscuit industry.

Glasgow's biscuit trade

established Glasgow was a significant biscuit city long before the Penguin. James Lang opened a bakery on the Gallowgate in 1817, and the firm that grew from it, Macfarlane, Lang & Co, opened its Victoria Biscuit Works at Tollcross in 1925. Edinburgh had McVitie & Price, and Leith had Crawford's. William Macdonald's business, founded in 1928, was a late entrant to a crowded trade, and it specialised in chocolate-coated lines.

established Laura Mason's entry on biscuits in The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) explains how that trade arose. After the Royal Navy mechanised ship's biscuit production during the Napoleonic Wars, entrepreneurs borrowed the technology, and Carrs, Huntley & Palmers, Peek Frean, McVitie's and Crawfords were all established by 1860. Since the mid-19th century, she writes, branded biscuits based on creamed and pastry-type mixtures had steadily multiplied. Chocolate-coated biscuits were the late arrival: in her account they "only became a lucrative business after the Second World War". Macdonald's chocolate lines of the 1930s were therefore ahead of the market, and the firm's real growth at Hillington in the 1950s coincided with the post-war boom she describes.

William Macdonald and the 1932 launch

established Grace's Guide and Wikipedia both date the first Penguins to 1932 and credit William Macdonald, a Glasgow biscuit manufacturer. The product was a chocolate-covered sandwich biscuit with a chocolate cream centre, sold individually wrapped.

shared Brand histories say Macdonald was prompted by chocolate-covered biscuits he had seen from Antwerp in Belgium. No contemporary evidence for this has been traced, and the reason for the name "Penguin" is not recorded at all. A black-and-white bird suits a dark biscuit with a light-coloured filling, but that is an explanation, not a source.

shared Carol Foreman, in Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010), working from United Biscuits material, gives a different Antwerp link. In her account Macdonald was a successful biscuit salesman who set up as a food commission agent in 1925 and, as a sideline, imported cream-filled wafers from Antwerp, selling them at less than half the price of similar products. He then leased a former ordnance factory at Cardonald in Glasgow, coating other makers' biscuits in chocolate, and in 1928, aged 53, with a wife and six children, became a biscuit manufacturer himself. On this version Antwerp supplied wafers for his trade, not the idea of the Penguin. She also says the firm used only butter as its fat, sold at a shilling a pound against competitors' 1s 4d, and that after the Second World War it made just two biscuits, the Glengarry shortcake and the Penguin, until Munchmallow arrived in 1950, followed by Yoyo, Bandit and Taxi. Like everyone else, she says the reason for the name is unknown.

The interwar chocolate biscuit

established The Penguin was one of a cluster of chocolate biscuits launched between the wars. The food historian Lizzie Collingham, in The Biscuit (2020), notes that Cadbury's had patented a chocolate-covered cream sandwich biscuit in 1891 but never marketed it. After the First World War biscuit makers moved into chocolate to share in confectionery, whose sales doubled in the interwar years. McVitie & Price began coating digestives in chocolate in 1925. Collingham distinguishes chocolate-coated biscuits from chocolate-encased ones and says the encased kind proved more popular: Jacob's launched the Club in 1919, and "Macdonald's countered with the Penguin biscuit in 1932". The most successful was Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp of 1935, two wafer fingers in chocolate, which reached 80 tons a week within months and was renamed Kit Kat.

shared This sits awkwardly with Laura Mason's view, quoted above, that chocolate-coated biscuits only became lucrative after the Second World War. The two accounts measure different things. Collingham dates the products; Mason dates the mass market. The Penguin belongs to the first phase and profited from the second.

established The new biscuits also changed when biscuits were eaten. Collingham reports that a 1938 survey, The People's Food, found a habit of a mid-morning break with tea or coffee and a biscuit forming among the well-to-do. Rowntree's sold the Kit Kat as the best companion to a cup of tea. (Collingham attributes the survey to the biscuit makers William Crawford & Sons of Leith; a 1938 review in The Spectator identifies its author, Sir William Crawford, as an advertising man. See the separate card on Scotland's biscuit makers.)

War and the lunchbox

established Biscuits were brought into the wartime points scheme in August 1942, priced high in points to curb demand, and stayed popular all the same. The Glasgow diarist Pam Ashford found shop shelves stripped of chocolate biscuits in November 1940 and paid a shilling a pound for them, twice the pre-war price. Plain biscuits came off points in March 1949 and sweet biscuits only in May 1950, Collingham records.

established After the war, with sugar still scarce and home baking difficult, sweet biscuits took the place of cake in children's lunchboxes, while men were more often given cake for work. In Collingham's account this was the moment when the individually wrapped chocolate biscuits of the 1930s, the Club, the Kit Kat and the Penguin, came into their own. That fits the growth of Macdonald's Hillington operation in the 1950s described below.

The founder's name

shared The founder's surname appears as Macdonald, MacDonald and McDonald. Grace's Guide uses "William MacDonald and Sons"; Wikipedia uses both "Macdonald" and "McDonald" on the same page. This card uses Macdonald except in quotations.

Hillington and the post-war boom

shared Hillington Park's own heritage timeline says that in 1952 "the first Penguin biscuit is created at William Macdonald's Hillington factory". Since the biscuit already existed in 1932, this is best read as the start of Penguin production at the Hillington site rather than its invention. Grace's Guide holds Penguin material dated 1952 and 1954 and refers to a Glengarry Bakery at Hillington. The same heritage page says that by 1965 Macdonald & Sons accounted for almost 20 per cent of British chocolate biscuit exports. That figure comes from a property company's history page and has not been checked against trade statistics.

Into United Biscuits

established United Biscuits was formed in 1948 by the merger of two Scottish family firms, McVitie & Price of Edinburgh and Macfarlane Lang of Glasgow. It bought Crawford's in 1962 and William Macdonald & Sons in 1965, the latter for a reported £2.8 million. The Penguin, along with Macdonald lines such as Munch Mallow, Yo-Yo and Bandit, came into the group and was later sold under the McVitie's name. Foreman dates the takeover to 1964; The Times report cited by Grace's Guide is from January 1965, which may explain the difference.

shared According to GlasgowWorld's retrospective, the Hillington factory closed in 1967, two years after the takeover, and production went to the former Macfarlane Lang works at Tollcross, which was doubled in size and grew from 250 to 1,350 workers by 1969. These figures come from a local news feature and have not been checked against company records.

established Production did not stay in Scotland. The Penguin is now made at McVitie's factory on the A6 between Levenshulme in Manchester and Heaton Norris in Stockport. United Biscuits was sold to Yıldız Holding in November 2014 and placed within Pladis in 2016. In September 2022 Pladis closed the former Macfarlane Lang works at Tollcross, McVitie's last Scottish factory, with the loss of almost 500 jobs. A biscuit invented in Glasgow is now owned by a Turkish-controlled group and made in England.

The biscuit

established A Penguin consists of two chocolate-flavoured biscuits sandwiching a chocolate cream filling, the whole enrobed in a coating. Over the years McVitie's has added mint, orange, toffee, caramel and other flavours. In 2003 it launched spin-offs such as Penguin Chukkas, Wing Dings and Splatz, backed by a £5 million promotion. Foreman says the first new flavour since the original milk chocolate was "Penguin in the Dark", a dark chocolate version launched in autumn 1995, followed by a multipack of milk, plain, orange and mint. After criticism of trans fats in the filling, United Biscuits advertised by December 2007 that Penguins no longer contained them.

The 2025 coating change

established In 2025 Pladis changed the coating on Penguin and Club. In a statement reported by ITV News in October 2025, the company said it was "using a chocolate flavour coating with cocoa mass, rather than a chocolate coating." Trade reporting found that the bars now contained more palm and shea fat than cocoa. The cocoa content fell below the level UK rules require for a product to be called chocolate, so the packs now say "chocolate flavour". The change followed a sharp rise in world cocoa prices, which more than doubled in two years after poor harvests in West Africa.

Wrappers and jokes

established Penguin wrappers have long carried a cartoon penguin on the front and jokes or penguin facts on the side. The jokes are puns of a reliably low standard, and reading them aloud is part of the ritual.

"P-p-p-pick up a Penguin"

shared The stammering slogan is the best-remembered thing about Penguin advertising, but its date is uncertain. The draft of this card placed it in the 1960s; Wikipedia gives the 1970s television line "When you feel a little p-peckish, p-p-p-pick up a Penguin!" No archive of the original commercials was consulted for this card. Foreman, working from United Biscuits material, says McVitie's introduced the Penguin on television in 1965 with the actor Derek Nimmo speaking the line. That is the most specific date found, though it is not confirmed by an archive.

traditional Foreman also tells a story from 1991: at a signing at Ford's Bakery in Prestonpans, East Lothian, for a deal to train bakers in Leningrad, a member of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Putin, then working for the city's mayor Anatoly Sobchak, filled his pocket with Penguins from a plate. No independent source for it has been found. Michael Ellyatt's 1999 paper in the International Journal of Advertising and Marketing to Children examines McVitie's later Penguin campaigns and is the best academic starting point.

Penguin v Puffin

established In September 1996 Asda launched its own-label "Puffin" chocolate biscuit. The packaging was the same shape and size as Penguin's, used a mainly red colour scheme with dark lettering, and showed a black-and-white seabird. United Biscuits began proceedings in October 1996, and the case was tried in the High Court in February 1997 before Mr Justice Robert Walker.

established The judge held that the name "Puffin" did not infringe the registered PENGUIN trade mark, but that Asda's get-up amounted to passing off: shoppers were likely to think the two products came from the same maker. He said Asda had taken "a conscious decision to live dangerously". Asda could keep the Puffin name but had to change its packaging. In a counterclaim, four Penguin trade-mark registrations that had not been used since 1988 were revoked. The outcome showed that a brand's packaging, not only its registered name, could be protected against close imitation.

The Tim Tam

shared Arnott's of Australia launched the Tim Tam in 1964, and the company's own account, as reported in the Australian press and summarised on Wikipedia, is that it was modelled on the Penguin. The two have since been compared endlessly by expatriates. This card has not seen Arnott's original records.

• William Macdonald had been in business for only four years when he launched the Penguin.
• No one has found a record of why he called it the Penguin.
• When United Biscuits bought Macdonald's in 1965, it paid a reported £2.8 million.
• The Puffin case revoked four Penguin trade marks that had lain unused since 1988.
• Since 2025, Penguins are no longer legally "chocolate" biscuits.
• The Penguin is now made near Stockport, not Glasgow.
• The Penguin is three years older than the Kit Kat and thirteen years younger than Jacob's Club.
• Cadbury's patented a chocolate-covered cream biscuit in 1891 and then let it drop.
• Sweet biscuits stayed on wartime points rationing until May 1950.
• Before making biscuits, William Macdonald imported cream wafers from Antwerp and coated other firms' biscuits in chocolate.
• After the Second World War Macdonald's made only two biscuits: the Glengarry and the Penguin.
• The first new Penguin flavour, "Penguin in the Dark", came only in 1995.

• Disputed: Antwerp inspired the Penguin, and the name has an explanation. Brand histories say William Macdonald was prompted by chocolate biscuits from Antwerp, while Carol Foreman says Antwerp supplied wafers for his trade. No contemporary evidence for either has been traced, and the reason for the name "Penguin" is not recorded at all.
• Myth: McVitie's has owned the Penguin since the 1940s. United Biscuits, McVitie's parent, bought William Macdonald & Sons in 1965. A modern company chronology dating the Penguin's arrival at McVitie's to 1946 cannot be right.
• Disputed: when United Biscuits bought Macdonald's. Foreman gives 1964; the Times report cited by Grace's Guide is from January 1965, which may explain the difference.
• Myth: The Penguin still has a milk chocolate coating. Since 2025 the coating contains too little cocoa to be called chocolate, and packs say "chocolate flavour".
• Myth: The Penguin was invented in 1952 at Hillington. The Penguin existed from 1932. The Hillington Park timeline's 1952 entry is best read as the start of production at that site.
• Myth: Penguins are still made in Scotland. They are made at McVitie's factory near Stockport. The last Scottish McVitie's factory, at Tollcross in Glasgow, closed in 2022.
• Disputed: when "P-p-p-pick up a Penguin" was first broadcast. Foreman dates the first television use to 1965, spoken by Derek Nimmo. Other sources give the 1960s or 1970s, and no archive has confirmed the first broadcast.
• Myth: The Penguin was the first chocolate biscuit bar. Jacob's Club came first, in 1919, and McVitie & Price began coating digestives in chocolate in 1925.
• Disputed: Vladimir Putin filling his pocket with Penguins in 1991. The story comes from Foreman alone; no independent source has been found.