Penguin is a chocolate sandwich biscuit with a chocolate flavoured coating, filled with chocolate flavour cream. It is produced by Pladis' manufacturing division McVitie's at their Stockport factory. Since 2025, the coating on the biscuits has been described as "chocolate flavour" because the amount of cocoa it contains has been reduced below the 20% minimum required to be called "chocolate".[1]
History
William Macdonald founded Macdonald Biscuits in Glasgow in 1928. After seeing some biscuits from Antwerp he was inspired to create a chocolate covered biscuit with a chocolate cream sandwich in the centre.[2] They were first produced in 1932 and became a McVitie's product a few years after MacDonald was taken over by United Biscuits in 1965. Each wrapper has a joke or "funny fact" printed on it and imaginative, often humorous designs featuring penguins that often pastiche famous works of art.
The Tim Tam, produced by Arnott's in Australia and first sold in 1964, was based on the Penguin.