Flyte

Region

United Kingdom

Associated With

Mars - brand owner

Defining Feature

Reduced-fat chocolate positioning

Status

Discontinued - final UK withdrawal date unknown

Overview

Flyte was a Mars chocolate bar marketed to UK shoppers as a reduced-fat alternative to solid milk chocolate.

Launched in the late 1990s, it paired fluffy chocolatey centres with a milk-chocolate coating. Twin-piece packs carried the slogan “Taste the Chocolate… skip some fat!”, making the fat comparison part of the product’s identity.

The name later appeared on ice cream and drinks. The chocolate bar was eventually discontinued, although its exact UK withdrawal date remains unconfirmed.

Why It Mattered

The wrapper offered shoppers a way to reconcile a chocolate treat with watching their fat intake. Flyte’s appeal depended on that distinction: less fat could sound like a lighter choice without necessarily meaning fewer calories.

Launch Date and Early Market

• Mars’s anniversary timeline places Flyte under 1997; Marketing Week called it a recent launch in May 1997 and dated it to the previous year in April 1998.
• A market passage reproduced in educational material instead gives 1996, but its original publication has not been identified.
• Marketing Week reported nearly 50 million bars sold and a top-20 place among filled-bar brands by April 1998; the underlying sales dataset was not independently inspected.
• By December 1997, Marketing Week identified DMB&B as the agency handling the Flyte account.

The 2006 Pack and Its Claims

• A June 2006 UK review documented two small milk-chocolate-coated pieces with fluffy chocolatey centres in one pack.
• The wrapper said “Taste the Chocolate… skip some fat!” and “Half the fat of solid block milk chocolate”.
• The review reported 441 kcal per 100g, while 1998 commentary explicitly distinguished Flyte’s reduced-fat proposition from calorie reduction.

Brand Extensions and Later Status

• A Flyte ice cream was proposed in December 1997 with April 1998 availability expected; its existence is independently documented by July 1999.
• Flyte-branded powdered and ready-to-drink products were reported in the United Kingdom by September 2004.
• Mars UK named Flyte in a planned saturated-fat reduction for summer 2010, but the announcement does not confirm that the change was implemented.
• A March 2016 kosher product list included Mars Flyte, while later nostalgia coverage gives 2015 as its discontinuation year; neither establishes its final manufacture or withdrawal date.

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