This is one of a large collection of films made by Rowntree’s of York (now Nestlé).  Most of the films came via the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, based at the University of York.  Other films have come from different sources, such as Ken Clough, a former engineering designer for Rowntree who filmed many of their manufacturing processes.  The vast bulk of the films are adverts for their confectionary products: including Rolo, Black Magic, Toffee Crisp, Smarties, Milky Bar,...

This is one of a large collection of films made by Rowntree’s of York (now Nestlé).  Most of the films came via the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, based at the University of York.  Other films have come from different sources, such as Ken Clough, a former engineering designer for Rowntree who filmed many of their manufacturing processes.  The vast bulk of the films are adverts for their confectionary products: including Rolo, Black Magic, Toffee Crisp, Smarties, Milky Bar, KitKat, Dairy box and many other brands made between 1929 and 1990.  The earliest one of the adverts is Mr York of York, Yorks, the first animated advertisement to be made, in 1929, with synchronised sound - also online.   For an overview of the Rowntree’s business see After Eight Adverts (1962).
Tokens are a neglected variety of Rowntree’s chocolates: Paul Crystal, for example, doesn’t mention them in either of his books – though they do they get a small recognition on the Sweets and Nostalgia website.  They were launched, presumably, in 1962, the year of the first TV advertisement.   It isn’t clear when they were stopped being produced, but, again presumably, they didn’t last that long.  Perhaps they didn’t have such a clear market as Black Magic, or as good an advertising slant (the rather lacklustre name doesn’t help).  They may well have been replaced by Today, another chocolate assortment box launched by Rowntree’s, in 1963 ¬– the YFA has film of the making of the TV adverts for this, From Script to Screen, the story of a television commercial.  These too vanished without trace.
The competition at the time would have been fierce with many different chocolate assortments on the market:  Mackintosh's Quality Streets, Milk Tray, Cadbury Roses, Dairy Box, Black Magic and Terry's All Gold.  All of these were well established, having been launched before the war.  Most also had very appealing TV advertisements: including the memorable Cadbury Roses ones with Norman Vaughan, and the slogan, ‘Roses grow on you!’  So trying to introduce a new brand into this crowded market in the 1960s wasn’t easy.  All of these other brands are still going, and this when there is much greater choice; with Belgium chocolates, and those other Yorkshire chocolate manufacturers Thornton’s, beginning as a small Sheffield family business.
The British eat more chocolate than any other nation in Europe.  Latest figures show that we account for 32 per cent of the total market value in Europe, estimated at £3.7 billion. This may have something to do with the fact that chocolate contains tryptophan, a chemical that the brain uses to make serotonin, which can produce feelings of elation – and doubtless linked to the Government’s plans to make us all more happy.
For more on chocolate see also the Context for Mr York of York, Yorks (1929).
In his book on British advertising, Winston Fletcher states that Britain led the way in producing brilliant and innovative advertisements from the 1950s onwards.  The idea of a ‘brand’ was mooted as long ago as August 1918, when the British trade journal Advertiser’s Weekly, “predicted that the future of world commerce belonged to the branded commodity that was protected by a registered trade mark” (Schwarzkopf).  As early as 1909 Unilever’s founder William Lever sought to create a ‘halo’ around an article: a “miasma of thoughts, beliefs and feelings ‘the article’ [brand] conjures up in consumer’s minds” (Sorrell, p 59). However, it was not before the mid-1950s that the brand image became a common staple within the global advertising industry.  In an article for the Harvard Business Review in March 1955, titled ‘The product and the brand’, Sidney Levy and Burleigh Gardner proposed the idea that a brand held holistic and personal characteristics. 
British born David Ogilvy took up this idea in the advertising agency he set up on Madison Avenue in the late 1950s.  In his book Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) he states that, “what you show is more important than what you say . . . if it doesn’t sell without sound it is useless.” (Cited in Sorrell, p 37).  This last statement might be somewhat exaggerated but the list of great film directors who cut their teeth making advertisements is pretty impressive: among them, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell, Alan Parker and John Schlesinger (Sorrell provides a list, p 38 – and Sam Delaney gives an insider’s account of the advertising people from that time).  Yet the importance of the words is shown by those writers who first made a living writing advertising copy; such as Joseph Heller, Len Deighton, Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon.
From the mid-1950s a key part of Rowntree’s marketing strategy was for gaining consumer brand recognition through television advertising.  Yet the 1955 Television Act was opposed by many, including Bertrand Russell and E M Forster.  ITV started on 22nd September 1955, with the first ad being shown at 8.12pm for Gibbs SR toothpaste.  At first advertisers were far from convinced that television advertising would work, despite the number of television licenses doubling between 1954 and 1956. But television advertising proved to be a huge breakthrough: by 1960 it accounted for a quarter of all advertising expenditure.  Everyone was looking for the Golden Key in advertising that would give a product that ‘extra value’; though it has been proved that there is no single magical formula.  For more on advertising see also the Context for Spero Publicity (1972).
The opposition to the Television Bill reflected a general concern about advertising.  This was forcefully put by Aneurin Bevan when he told a conference of the Advertising Association in 1953 (with 1,400 plus delegates): "I regard advertising as one of the most evil consequences of a society which is itself evil.” (quoted in Sorrell, p24).  Another critic of the time was J.B. Priestley, who in his 1955 book Journey Down a Rainbow coined the term ‘Admass’ for: “the whole system of an increasing productivity, plus inflation, plus a rising standard of living, plus high-pressure advertising and salesmanship, plus mass communications, plus cultural democracy and the creation of the mass mind, the mass man."
Those raising concerns about the culturally harmful effect of advertising came from across the political spectrum, as evidenced by the generally right wing Punch journalist E S (Ernest Sackville) Turner.  In his enjoyable book The Shocking History of Advertising first published in 1952, Turner cites some of those oppositional voices, including another journalist, the American Herbert Agar: “Everyone is affected by the mist of deception which we continually breathe.  The trouble is that we prefer to breathe that mist.”  (2nd edition, 1965)
Television advertising has moved on much since the 1950s and 60s, with adverts sometimes affecting an ironic ‘post-modern’ parody of ads from that era.  But ads come in many different kinds, and despite the greater sophistication of today’s advertising agencies, with Saatchi and Saatchi in the vanguard, many advertisements have changed very little in basics – creating idyllic lifestyles consumers dream of inhabiting.  Sociologists have made much of how much we live in a society where the boundary between fantasy and reality has become increasingly blurred.  A point echoed by J G Ballard in his 1973 novel Crash: “We live inside an enormous novel.  For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel.  The fiction is already there.  The writer's task is to invent the reality.”
References
Paul Crystal, Chocolate: the British Chocolate Industry, Shire, 2011.
Paul Crystal and Joe Dickinson, A History of Chocolate in York, Remember When (Pen & Sword Books), 2012.
Sam Delaney, Get Smashed: the story of the men who made the adverts that changed our lives, Sceptre, 2007.
Robert Fitzgerald, 'Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution 1862-1969', The Economic History Review. 48, no. 3, (1995): 622
Roy Smith, The Money Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Great Buyout Boom of the 1980s, Beard Books (2000) 1990.
"Rowntree Accepts Bid By Nestle." New York Times 24 June 1988. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
"Hungry for Takeover Targets; Nestlé’s acquisition of Rowntree." Sunday Times [London, England] 26 June 1988. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
"Tempus: Rowntree Mackintosh." Times [London, England] 14 Mar. 1986. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
Corley, T.A.B. "Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 1862-1969." Business History 37.4 (1995): 108+. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
Ethical Consumer
National Archives: Rowntree Records
Advertising Archives
Television Adverts 1955-1990
Andrew Martin, Death by chocolate Cadburys' sale ends an age in which working-class culture was shaped by Quaker entrepreneurs, The Guardian, 21 January 2010
South Africa's great chocolate rivalry
Stefan Schwarzkopf, Turning Trade Marks into Brands: how Advertising Agencies Created Brands in the Global Market Place, 1900-1930
Rowntrees advert posters, Advertising Archives
Sweets and Nostalgia website
TV Shows We Used To Watch - 1955 Television advertising
Chronomedia 1955