Danish Luxury

Candy Chocolate Toms

Skildpadder

Skildpadder are turtle-shaped Toms chocolates filled with rum cream and caramel; the best known is the large Kæmpe Skildpadde.

Made by
Toms
First made
1948

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Vintage boxes of Toms creamfilled chocolate turtles shown beside the chocolates themselves.
Vintage boxes of Toms creamfilled chocolate turtles shown beside the chocolates themselves.
An English-language box of Toms filled dark chocolate turtles.
An English-language box of Toms filled dark chocolate turtles.

Pictures © Toms, from tomsgroupheritage.com.

Why it is renowned

Danes eat about 22 million Kæmpe Skildpadder a year, TV 2 reported in 2016.1 After the Second World War Toms built moulding lines that ran for hours and turned out thousands of turtles at a time.2

The story

The first Skildpadder, from 1948, were flat and filled with rum cream.2 In 1967 Toms added caramel to the filling and made the turtles taller to hold both.2 The historian Annette Hoff traces the shape to a leatherback turtle that washed ashore at Sjællands Odde in 1948.1

  • Guld Barre, the other Toms chocolate Danes know it by
Sources
  1. En kæmpeskildpadde afslører: De gjorde en forretning ud af min død - TV 2. livsstil.tv2.dk, read 2 October 2026.
  2. Machinery and Production - Toms Group Heritage. tomsgroupheritage.com, read 1 October 2026.
  3. Toms - Toms Group Heritage. tomsgroupheritage.com, read 1 October 2026.
  4. Ownership and Brands - Toms Group Heritage. tomsgroupheritage.com, read 1 October 2026.

Last checked 2 October 2026, against the maker's own pages.