Fesey Chocolate Figures from Riemerling in Upper Bavaria
Fesey is a family-run manufactory from Riemerling near Munich that has been making nothing but chocolate figures since 1933. They are cast in two-part nostalgic molds and hand-wrapped in solid-colored foil. No prints, no paper bands, no painted-on faces.
Fesey stands for chocolate figures that derive their entire effect from their embossed shape and the glossy foil covering them. The manufactory operates in Riemerling, a district of Hohenbrunn southeast of Munich, and is managed by the third generation of the Seybold family. There, they produce Santa Clauses, Easter bunnies, hearts, lucky pigs, and may bugs from the same milk chocolate with at least 37 percent cocoa content.
The fame began with a heart
In 1950, Fesey was present with its chocolate hearts at the first Oktoberfest after the Second World War and has remained the oldest confectionery supplier of the Wiesn ever since. This is not a footnote in the company chronicle, but the origin of a reputation that still endures today.
The company was founded back in 1933 as Fesey Schokolade-Figuren W. Seybold, and it has remained a purely family-run business throughout the decades. Hugo and Christine Seybold are now the registered owners of the firm, and with their son Sebastian, the next generation has long since grown up with the same chocolate and the same molds.
Anyone who considers the span of over 90 years can better understand the restraint in the presentation. Over these decades, plenty of packaging trends have come and gone. A Santa Claus in solid-colored foil has outlasted them all and today even looks more modern than most of what attempted to replace it in the meantime.
Two mold halves, strong magnets, a star spinner
The production of a hollow figure is a game of warmth and centrifugal force, and Fesey describes this process in detail on their own website. Tempered chocolate is first placed in one half of the two-part mold, then the second half is placed on top with precision.
Strong magnets hold both parts together while the mold rotates on a so-called star spinner until the liquid mass has coated the inner wall evenly. It then travels through a 12-meter-long cooling tunnel, where the chocolate sets and acquires the shine seen later at the breaking edge. Only at the very end does the human hand come into play, wrapping each figure individually in its foil.
Fesey calls this "hand-foiled," and the company explicitly states that small differences from piece to piece are part of the manual work and not defects. One fold sits differently than on the figure next to it, a glint breaks in a different place, and the seam never runs exactly the same way twice. That is precisely how you can tell that no machine made the final decision here.
In addition to the foiled figures, Fesey also produces hand-painted ones, and with these, the color of the chocolate even comes first. Colored sugar mass with cocoa butter is piped into the mold halves with a pastry bag before casting—by hand and using AZO-free food coloring. Machines are not used for coloring. Our figures belong to the foiled side of the house, where the color sits on the outside instead of under the chocolate.
From Santa Claus to the lucky pig to the may bug
The year at this manufactory runs in four waves, and each wave brings its own shapes from the shelf. In late summer, the Christmas items start, followed by New Year's, Easter, and finally the may bug.
The Christmas season includes the chocolate Santa Claus with beard, hood, and sack over his shoulder, the fir tree with embossed ornament decorations, the curved five-pointed star, as well as the flat reliefs of St. Nicholas, angels, and gingerbread men. The manufacturer also produces Christmas elk, reindeer, Mrs. Claus, and a Santa boot, which comes in several sizes.
After the turn of the year, lucky pigs, horseshoes, and chimney sweeps take over the display case; in the spring, it's the Easter bunny in its many colors, plus the reclining Easter lamb, chicks, and an Easter egg filled with pralines. The may bug is a Bavarian specialty of the house and comes in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate with at least 58 percent cocoa content.
The hearts are available all year round, from the small chocolate heart to the oversized Mother's Day heart, and alongside them are special shapes such as cats, cars, espresso makers, gnomes, and a pair of chocolate pumps. You can see which of these figures is currently on our shelf in the grid below.
18 foil colors and not a single print
Fesey maintains a color fan with around 18 foil colors, from brown and beige to gold, silver, copper, and champagne, all the way to petrol, pink, and light green. The real trick of this assortment lies hidden within this.
Because the foil remains solid-colored and nothing is printed on it, a whole family of colors with very different effects is created from a single mold. The same Santa Claus looks festive in gold and cheeky in pink; the same fir tree looks woodsy in moss green and frosty in ice blue. For a set table, a color can be consistently applied rather than putting together a colorful mix of whatever happens to be on the shelf.
The color names themselves come from trade and not from the manufactory's fan, which simply lists its foils by number. Therefore, "kaminrot" (fireplace red), "eisblau" (ice blue), and "champagner" (champagne) are our words for shades that are otherwise nameless there. We therefore sort our figures by color so that you can put together what you want to see on the table at the end.
Preserving the old, creating the new
The principle of the house is a four-word sentence that appears on their own website: "Altes bewahren, Neues schaffen" (Preserve the old, create the new). The molds therefore remain the same while the production around them becomes more modern.
Two workstations at the manufactory are staffed through the Bundesverein Lebenshilfe (a national association for people with disabilities). In a business of this size, that is anything but a matter of course and is mentioned on their own site rather casually than highlighted.
Preserving the old means that a milk chocolate with at least 37 percent cocoa content is allowed to remain milky and mild instead of chasing the trend for ever-higher cocoa percentages. Cocoa butter is listed before cocoa mass in the ingredients list, and that is precisely what you notice in the melt, which gives way at room temperature rather than splintering. Children like this chocolate, and so do adults who take a piece from the Advent plate in the evening.
Throughout the year, the figures between St. Nicholas Day and Christmas Eve serve as place cards, decorations for gift plates, and Secret Santa gifts all at once. The small reliefs with their 20 grams incidentally fill a self-packed Advent calendar. At Easter, the bunny wanders into the nest, where the satin ribbon around its neck makes more of an impression than any printed foil, and hearts have no season anyway. You can find further chocolate figures from other manufactories with us, as well as the entire Christmas assortment and everything related to Easter.
One more thing about the season, so you aren't surprised: From May to September, the chocolate assortment is largely on hold, because chocolate and summer heat simply don't get along. The figures return in the autumn, just in time for the first candle on the Advent wreath.
