Okay, there's not really anything scary about this week's top five. But it's Halloween!, which is one of the chocolatiest holidays, along with Easter, Valentines' Day, and there are also all those advent calendars at Christmas. >ahem< Anyway. Halloween and chocolate are totally BFFs!

This week's orders were a bit more Christmassy, with a few forward-thinking chocri fans test running our new holiday packaging. But we've still got trick or treating and candy corn on the brain, and here's this week's top five! (What are you looking forward to in your candy bag this Halloween?)

• Lilacably Delicious (Milk Chocolate with Ginger, Candied Lilac and Soy Bacon in Holiday Packaging) Because we're suckers for puns.

• Lick It, Bite It, Eat It (Milk Chocolate with Fleur de Sel, Toffee and Bourbon Vanilla) And innuendo. And tequila.

• White Christmas Bliss - Merry Christmas Mom! :) (White Chocolate with Cranberries, Cinnamon, Fig Bits, Bourbon Vanilla and Almonds in Holiday Packaging) And your mom, because she's awesome.

• Munch Meat (Dark Chocolate with Fleur de Sel, Toffee, Mini Cookies and Almonds) Like lunch meat, but without having to take a ticket at the deli counter...

• Ladylike (Dark Chocolate with Real Gold Flakes, Pine Nuts and Candied Lilac) Flowers, gold and chocolate, all in one convenient bar.

Are you all up in this? Do you love chocolate? Tell us or show us, and win free chocolate for a year!

Today is National Chocolate Day, which we think is totally undercelebrated. Schools should be out! Everyone should get a day off work! We should all be reveling in the glorious substance that soothes sads, makes dessert amazing and defeats dementors in the Harry Potter books.

Alas, National Chocolate Day isn't quite to that level. (Yet.) But we think that that chocolate deserves a bit of recognition today, and we've designed a contest for which the prize is free chocolate every month for a whole year. (!!!)

One winner will receive this most awesome of prizes, and be awarded with a free chocolate bar each month. So what do you have to do to win? We want to know how you feel about chocolate. It can be a picture, or a video, or a blog post. Simply go to our Chocri International page, post your entry, and get everyone you know to "Like" it.

At the end of the contest (in one week), we'll tally up the likes and the entry with the most likes wins. If you don't get the most likes, fret not. We will be awarding random prizes to entries that are particularly awesome.

So let us know- what do you love about chocolate?

Though Americans consume a lot of chocolate, not many people are familiar with the process during which cocoa beans become the tasty, creamy treat we all know and love.

Cacao pods are the source of the beans that supply our chocolate, and these are cut from trees using machetes (scary!) or they are shaken from the trees using a stick. Then harvesters remove the beans and their surrounding pulp from the pods, setting the beans aside to ferment and allowing them to develop a chocolatey taste. If the beans are harvested before they've fully ripened, they will have a weak flavor. When the fermentation process is complete, the beans must immediately be dried, usually by allowing them to sit in the sun for 5-7 days. If the beans are not immediately dried, mold can grow, ruining them.

Next stop for the beans is a chocolate factory- while there may not be a chocolate boat ride or oompah loompahs, there are facilities to clean the beans and remove debris, twigs, leaves or stones. The beans are then roasted, graded, and the shells are removed, extracting the nib, which is ground and liquefied into chocolate liquor. From this magical substance comes two important components- cocoa butter and cocoa solids.

The chocolate liquor is combined with cocoa butter in differing ratios to create varying kinds of chocolate- milk, dark, white and other varieties, like the strawberry chocolate we featured this summer. Chocolate is further refined and processed from here, but that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and based on the quality of the chocolate.

So now you know the basic journey chocolate makes from the tree to your hands- pretty cool, huh?

If you've got trick-or-treaters in the house, you know that the impending sweets orgy surrounding Halloween can be a bit of a concern.

Kids generally go a bit crazy with candy consumption when they return home with their loot. They get all sugared up, and OMG- what about their teeth? You can monitor their brushing and limit their chocolate and candy consumption to a degree, but what Halloween candy is best for kids' teeth?

According to a dentist interviewed by the OC Register, chocolate is a much healthier dental choice for Halloween. It's not an apple or a carrot, but Dr. John DeLorme of Mission Viejo warns against the continual sugar attack of hard candy and chewier sweets:

"If you look at the hard, sticky, chewy things, the amount of time it take to consume one of those things, that continual sugar attack on the tooth is not good," he said. "Nonsticky candy that clears the mouth quickly, like Hershey bars and M&Ms, are better than Jolly Ranchers, lollipops, Starburst and Skittles."

Dr. DeLorme also recommends keeping the candy consumption to within a week of Halloween rather than doling it out until Christmas. Looking for some particularly festive Halloween chocolate? Check out our Candy Corn topping, explained on the chocri blog!

Brrr! Fall is here in full swing, especially if we're judging by the popularity of our Fall Harvest Bar. (Found in recommended creations.) Orders drifted down on us like the changing leaves this week, and selecting the top five was a bit of a challenge. We couldn't narrow it down to five only, so here are this week's top six bar names:

[ETA: Chocri fan? Vote for us in the Mashable Awards!]

• It's Jalapen-Yo' Birthday (Milk Chocolate with Roasted Almonds, Ground Chili, Jalapeños, Writing: "Happy Birthday!" and Soy Bacon) But this ancho cake.

• Happy Birthday Adonis (Milk Chocolate with Colorful Chocolate Dragées, Rice Crispies and Rice Crispies in Chocolate Coating) For the god on Earth who has everything.

• Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding (Milk Chocolate with Ginger, Hazelnut Brittle, Cinnamon, Fig Bits and Mini Cookies) "So you come in here and just DEMAND figgy pudding?"

• Too Many Options for Erin (Dark Chocolate with Candied Rose Petals, Fleur de Sel, Cayenne Pepper, Soy Bacon and Cocoa Nibs) I'm pretty sure Erin will be pleased...

• I gchat heart you (Dark Chocolate with Smiley Male and Candy Cane in Holiday Packaging) Geek love: it always makes the top five. Or six.

• Emily's Chocolate, To avoid arguements. (Milk Chocolate with Orange Chocolate Drops and Rice Crispies in Chocolate Coatingin Holiday Packaging) Emily's chocolate- you cannot has.

Feeling creative? Three of our top toppings are on sale for the rest of the month, so have a go and see if your chocri creation makes next week's top 5!

As promised, I will post some customized gift ideas every Thursday on this blog, as the Holiday Season draws closer. Today, I'll introduce you to three corporate gift ideas. There's a lot of companies that let you buy personalized pens etc in bulk, at a cheap price. But many of those have boring gifts (pens? golf balls?), stuff that everyone gives, and that only begins to get cheap for really high quantities. I have found design-your-own websites to be a better option - they are often able to provide discounts if you buy in bulk, but they usually carry higher quality, and there are no setup fees. So, without further ado, here three ideas for great promotional gifts for employees, clients and anyone you can think of:

Personal Wine

I must admit I didn't find Personal Wine myself- my parents found it, and ordered a wine bottle for me for my birthday. The wine was great - they have a very decent selection of wines on the site, starting at $19 for a regular bottle. Mini Bottles can be customized for just below $5 a piece, which gets cheaper the more you buy. I like the concept because it's something you can really enjoy, and it's super easy to design your own label for the wine bottle. If you happen to be in a state that doesn't allow alcohol to be shipped, you can also order custom labels and apply them to wine yourself. I think it's a great gift idea, and as a client or employee, it's a very unusual gift to receive!

Element Bars

Custom energy bars by Element Bars is the perfect corporate gift idea if you're in the business of health, fitness and nutrition. Weight Watchers, I'm looking at you: Have you gotten your holiday gifts yet? On the Element Bar's site, you can create your own nutrition bar by choosing from four "cores" (e.g. a chewy core), and then fruit, nuts, sweets and boosts. So once you have your perfect formula all set, you name it and are delivered a box of 12 bars with a price tag starting at a mere $1.99 per premade nutrition bar or $2.99 per custom bar (depending on what you put in it. If you order 200 element bars or more, you can get a bulk discount, as well as a nutritional consultation. They even offer marketing and promotional support, and since I know the founder, Jonathan, I know it will be great! Element Bars are all natural, handmade and then delivered to your door (or mail room) freshly baked.

Design A Tea

Design A Tea is one of those secret tips that only a few lucky people know about. But it's a wonderful site - not only as a promotional gift! On the site, you can choose a base tea and add favorite flavors similar to how you create your own chocolate bar on our site. You can personalize your tea mix with a name as well, of course. For businesses and events, Design a Tea also offers free custom labeling on our Design a Tea custom blends. Business logos can be incorporated on the label for no additional cost, by emailing the logo and details to Brian at brian@designatea.com after placing your order. My custom tea mix came out to $4.75, which is a very reasonable price for a truly unique gift idea. What would you mix?

And of course, our chocolate bars make a great corporate gift, too! Find more info on our Bulk Info page, and email me so I can make you a great quote! Reference customers include the Hilton and Etihad Airways.

Stay tuned for more personalized gift ideas next week!

One of the ways we like to encourage topping diversity for optimum chocri creativity is highlighting certain toppings (or bases) for their national days (or months.)

October is a particularly delicious month when it comes to foods being honored. Three items in our toppings section have a national food items in October, and we've marked down all three for the rest of the month.

First up is Apple Bits, marked down from 1.00 to 0.50. Tasty and popular Organic Salt Pretzels have been reduced from 0.70 to 0.35 and our Caramel Chocolate Drops have dropped from 1.10 to 0.55. These prices will be active until the end of October, so get them while they're in stock and on sale!

Want to try all three? Don't forget that when you order five bars, we include a sixth surprise bar on us!

One of the topics we like to cover on the chocri blog is the effect of chocolate consumption on diet and health. We don't really need any more reasons to eat chocolate (deliciousness is, after all, an excellent reason to nom it all the time) but it seems to be a favorite topic when it comes to science and health. (And if I were I scientist, I think I would study the effects of chocolate consumption like, all the time.)

We've covered the effects of chocolate consumption of cholesterol levels in the past, and the BBC has posted another, similar study discussing the impact of chocolate consumption on the cholesterol levels of diabetics.

The study the BBC post referenced again centered around small amounts of dark, high cocoa content chocolate:

"A total of 12 volunteers with the type II form of the condition were given identical chocolate bars, some enriched with polyphenols, over a 16 week period... Those given the enriched bars experienced a small improvement in their overall cholesterol "profile", with total cholesterol falling, and levels of so-called "good" cholesterol rising.

"Professor Steve Atkin, who led the study, suggested that it could mean a reduction in heart risk, (saying) "Chocolate with a high cocoa content should be included in the diet of individuals with type II diabetes as part of a sensible, balanced approach to diet and lifestyle."

Doctors quoted were quick to point out that chocolate should be consumed in moderation, and that the study was not a "green light" to eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (>pout<) Overall, however, the results are another interesting look into the many ways adding high quality, high cocoa content chocolate to your diet can be a healthy move.

It's Friday again! This week, we brought back two retired bars for a day and we introduced candy corn for Halloween! And as always, we've gathered this week's top five bars into a handy list for your amusement.

• Orange You Blue-orange/blueberry (Milk and White Chocolate with Blueberries and Orange Pepper) Because puns are delicious.

• Thank blueberry much! (Milk Chocolate with Blueberries, Hazelnut Brittle and Bourbon Vanilla) See?

• Ultra Yummy Bar Thing (Milk Chocolate with Peanuts, Organic Salt Pretzels, Sprinkles and Peanut Butter Drops)

• honey's heaven (Dark Chocolate with Peanuts, Caramel Chocolate Drops and Nougat) No honey drops?!

• You Are So Date-able! (Milk Chocolate with Pecans, Rice Crispies, Date Bits, Bourbon Vanilla and Cocoa Nibs) Bawwwwwww!

Miss our Columbus Day special? Make sure to order your candy corn bar before we retire the topping! (You can find it in our toppings section under "confections.")

Many of you try us out for the first time as a unique gift - a personalized chocolate bar or a chocolate gift certificate for your loved ones. But as you know from this blogs Customization Tag, we're not the only company that allows you to create thoughtful, personal and most of all unusual gifts online. With the holidays coming up, I will use this blog to introduce you to a few personalized gift ideas - each week a few more websites. Enjoy!

Personalized Gift Idea for Him

If "he" is a passionate, or even just hobby golfer, he will love Lindgolf! On this website, you can design your own golf club in three easy steps. First, you can measure yourself (with assistance if you like), to determine the correct flex, grip size and golf shaft length for you. Then, you can customize your golf club by choosing gender, dexterity and club loft, and you can personalize it with different colors. Since all these choices seem to require a lot of knowledge, and are very personal, I highly recommend a gift card from Lindgolf. You can even email it on if you like (just as ours if you didn't know), which makes it a very convenient gift for a "he" that doesn't live close by.

Personalized Gift Idea for Her

A classic holiday gift is jewelry, of course. But if you don't want to give the same old stuff that everyone else is wearing, too, consider Gemvara. On Gemvara's site, you can customize rings, necklaces and their pendants, as well as earrings. From the large selection they have available, find a style you like, and then give it your own personal touch by choosing the color and type of accent stones as well as the type of metal used. I think what's really most remarkable to Gemvara is that you can rely on the design of a professional, choose the one you like the most, and then customize it with the colors and metals you like. A great way to provide guidance in the customization process! The jewelry doesn't come cheap, so this would probably be best as a gift for the special women in your life. Although they have men's jewelry as well!

Personalized Gift Idea for a Kid

A super fun mass customized product I recently discovered is Superstructs. I kind of want one! Superstruct Kits are essentially an advanced and smarter lego, wether it's a kit for a pink fairy garden for a girl, or a motorcycle kit (for anyone really. That's what I want!). They won awards for being so valuable both as education and entertainment. Only very recently did they introduce their "Custom Kit": In a first step, you drag and drop some of the models into the kit. You can then personalize your gift by choosing from 12 fun templates and adding your child's name - which is printed on the box. And that's then delivered directly to you - or your nephew/ niece, or a lucky kid somewhere else in the world.

More personalized gift ideas next week!

On our chocri blog, we often cover the (pretty frequent) news stories about the links between consumption of high-quality chocolate and improvements in health. (You can see all the posts on this subject under our "Health" tag.)

A recent article in Britain's Daily Mail gathered up a few of the myriad health benefits associated with (mostly dark) chocolate in a recent article. First up were cardiovascular perks related to a diet featuring chocolate:

"Research undertaken at the University of Aberdeen shows that flavanols, a form of antioxidant present in chocolate with a high cocoa mass, help prevent the activation of platelets in the blood, which contribute to heart disease... Another study conducted in Dusseldorf and at the University of California at Davis suggests consumption of flavanols can even reverse some of the artery damage caused by smoking.

And last year Professor Carl Keen, of the University of California, reported that eating small amounts of chocolate could have as powerful an anti-clotting effect on the blood as taking aspirin."

The article goes on to list effects of chocolate measured on the immune system (generally boosting it), cognitive function (improving memory and attention span), and stress levels (decreasing stress hormones), among other things. You can read the post in its entirety here. And if you're interesting in multi-tasking chocolate that tastes good and is good for you, you can find a few options to fit that criteria under our Recommended Creations.

Candy Corn is possibly the most classic of all Halloween candies, one you don't want it to miss on your personalized chocolate bar for the spooky season! So here we are - starting today, Candy Corn is available in the Confections section of the website. There's no image, but don't fret, I took a big picture for you of the delicious candy corn right here:

While the resemblance of candy corn to actual corn kernels is apparent, I personally also think that this Halloween candy classic reminds me of teeth or fangs about to bite your neck - maybe that's why it's so popular around this time of the year? Of all the candy corn, about two thirds are consumed around Halloween.

Candy Corn was invented in the 1880s by the Goerlitz Confectionary Company - whose founder was a German immigrant. And today, the German chocolate company chocri adds it as a topping to your custom chocolate bar!

Candy Corn is fat free, and its taste may remind you of marshmallows.

Enjoy! Create your Halloween Chocolate Bar with Candy Corn today!

Every second Monday in October, as you likely know, Americans observe Columbus Day in honor of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

Kids have a day off of school, and some places of business close in observance of the holiday. So for Columbus Day, we've brought back our two limited edition chocri bars for America's birthday. You can find our "Sea to Shining Sea" and "Nighttime Fireworks" bars back in recommended creations for one day only.

Also in honor of Columbus Day, we've marked these bars down to a very special price- we dropped the one, and they're both $4.92, today only. As always, if you order five bars, the sixth (surprise) bar is on us!

Happy Friday, chocri fans! Did you see that we introduced our Holiday packaging yesterday? One of this week's top five selected it- exciting!

• White Cranstash (White Chocolate with Cranberries and Pistachios in Holiday Packaging)
  So called because if you don't stash it, I'll eat it?!

• Aztec Chocolate Bar with Cashews (Dark Chocolate with Cashews, Ground Chili and Real Gold Flakes)
  Historically delicious.

• Redheaded Scorpio (Dark Chocolate with Cinnamon, Ground Chili, Orange Pepper, Fig Bits and Soy Bacon)
  Hey, baby, what's your sign?

• I will never leave you standing out in the rain (Milk and White Chocolate with Banana Chips, Coconut Shavings, Toffee, Bourbon Vanilla and Writing 'I Love You')
  BRB, someone is chopping onions in here! >wipes eyes<

• Look! Gold! In your chocolate! (Dark Chocolate with Real Gold Flakes and Toasted Hazelnuts)
  Shiny and delicious!

Stocking up for Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa? When you buy 5 bars, we always throw in a 6th bar on us!

Although Halloween hasn't yet arrived, Christmas is just around the corner. And we've been working like Santa's elves to prepare festive holiday packaging and some new, Christmassy chocolate gift certificates!

Chocolate gift certificates are a year-round thing, and our customers love to give them for birthdays, anniversaries or just-because presents. Chocri chocolate gift certificates are especially gifting friendly for a few reasons. If you'd like a tangible gift, you can instantly print your customized chocolate gift certificate when you place your order. If you hate printers or are more an email type, you can send your recipient a code and save on ink.

In addition to being a gift certificate for delicious custom chocolate, you can send a chocolate gift certificate as a last-minute gift for those people on your list you may have overlooked or for when you are late remembering an important birthday. (He who has not been caught gift card shopping on the way to a party at the 7-11 may cast the first stone.)

So while you may not have started to think about Christmas or Hannukah yet, chocolate gift certificates are an excellent choice for many gift-centric occasions. You can check out our Holiday specials here, and you can view larger versions of our chocolate gift certificates here.

As you know, chocri was the first company in the world to invent customized chocolate bars, and wow, are we proud of that. Besides us though, there are many other cool examples of mass customization, and today I'd like to introduce you to our good friends over at Coco Myles, where you can design your own dress.

It's every woman's dream. In the design your own dress section of the site, you can choose from 8 styles for the bottom of your dress, as well as 10 styles for the top part of your dress - and you can mix and match them to create the perfect dress. So you want a ball gown with strapless top? No problem. Or a scoop neck with a bubble skirt? Works just as well! You can then pick the fabric of the dress, the color of course, nice beading on the dress, and you can add a shawl or sash or bow to select combinations. All in all a wonderful playground for everyone who read princess books as a child (and which girl didn't?).

Matter of fact, it's not just for playing though - the dresses are not more expensive than a dress you would buy in a store! Take the dress in the image on the side for example. It's from their "celebrity inspired" line, where they take dresses celebrities wear and the recreate them in a similar fashion - only that you can customize it. I customized it by choosing red and the color "chocolate" (how much better could a dress be? Ok, I'm biased. I hear chocolate and am all for it.). The dress is $144. Have any of you ever been shopping for a bridesmaid dress or prom dress? I thought so. $144 looks nearly as sweet as honey chocolate drops!

Speaking of bridesmaid's dresses - that's actually Coco Myles specialty. The idea is that the bride picks the fabric, and within that limitation, the bridesmaids can customize the perfect dress for their preferences and body type. That way the bride has a great looking party to surround her on the big day, and the bridesmaid's have a dress they actually like and can wear again. Pretty nice idea!

Design your own dress with Coco Myles

What mass customization business is your favorite (besides us, of course)? Let us know in the comments! We love customization and companies that give the reigns to their customers, and we want to connect with all of them! Another great place to learn more about design-your-own websites is egoo-journal, a blog on customization and personalization where I guest blog sometimes as well.

As we have written before we moved on Facebook - we now have a page dedicated to our English speaking customers and fans, full of pictures, stories and conversations. We really benefit from your inputs and ideas, and of course it helps that some of you post positive reviews on the site! We'd love to connect with you more, and since we understand that you have limited space in your newsfeed, we'll reward you with

20% off once we reach 1,000 Fans on Facebook

That should be reached quickly- already 600 people like chocri on Facebook! Here are a few ways how you can help us grow and reduce the time until you get 20% off:

• Use the suggest to friends feature on Facebook. It's right below the profile picture, and you can invite your friends to like us, too. And who doesn't love chocolate? The best part - your friends get the 20% off coupon code as well!
• We know from you that you often refer us to your friends - and we are super grateful for that. If your friends were waiting for a discount to try us out, this is the time - it won't get lower than this. Tell them to like us on Facebook, and not only they'll get the 20%, you will, too!
• Right when you're reading this blog post, we'll have a post up on Facebook about this. You can share that post on your own wall and your friends can decide for themselves if they want to like us, too!

The 20% coupon code will be sent via an Update to all our fans as soon as the 1000 Fans (or do we call them Likers now?) is reached. See you on Facebook!

p.s. The coupon code will work on our US and UK website.

You may have read on our blog that the very first chocri bar was actually created by one of our founders seeking a thoughtful and creative birthday present- one that was also simultaneously awesome.

He created a custom birthday chocolate bar, and it was so appreciated that long story short, chocri was born. Chocolate is consistently a frequently gifted item for pretty much every occasion. Aside from being delicious, good chocolate is amazingly versatile for gifts. Birthday chocolate works well for romantic gifts, workplace related gifts, gifts for kids and gifts for parents and grandparents. Birthday chocri, however, has one important distinction- you can create any combination to exactly fit your giftee's tastes.

While you can create a birthday chocolate extravaganza with your recipient's favorite toppings and their base chocolate of choice, we also have dedicated birthday toppings to make a birthday bar extra festive. Among those pictured above are an edible banner reading "Happy Birthday" and star-shaped candle holders, so you can skip cake in favor of smooth, creamy chocolate.

Another feature that is standard on all our bars but is especially well suited to birthday chocolate is chocolate names- each bar can be custom labeled with a name or message for your recipient. We've seen sweet ones, funny ones and romantic ones, and each week we gather up the five most amusing and post them on our blog. This is a particularly nice feature for birthday chocolate, as it really sets chocri creations apart from other chocolate birthday gifts.

Have a question about birthday chocolate? Shoot us over an email and we'd be happy to help!

It's October! It's a new month! And that means - it's time for a new topping of the month. This month, it's Jelly Beans!

Jelly Beans are well known and require no introduction. Delicious little beans full of flavor - did you know there are 50 different flavors? That's not quite as many as the customized chocolate bars you can make on our site (27 billion), or even toppings (100), but that's still a lot!

Also, did you know that in the 20s, a "jelly bean" was a guy who tried to look stylish to impress women, but didn't have much else going for him. You can be sure that your custom chocolate bar will look stylish AND taste great if you add this topping to it!

What's your favorite Jelly Bean flavor? Strawberry Cheesecake, or Juicy Pear? Let us know in the comments!

Another busy week at chocri- we're still recovering from the DIY-excitment fest that was World Maker Faire at the Hall of Science in Queens! We still had time to gather this week's top five, though:

• Ms. Nobody Bar (Milk Chocolate with Writing: "Happy Birthday!", Toffee and Peanut Butter Drops)
  This Ms. Nobody is sure going to feel like Someone (great) after getting this custom chocolate bar!

• Flower Cookie Crunch (Dark Chocolate with Real Gold Flakes, Mini Flower Decoration, Sugar Flowers, Rice Crispies in Chocolate Coating and Cookie Crumbs)
  Alice in Wonderland picnic?

• Some things ARE black and white. (Dark Chocolate with Multicolored Pepper and Fleur de Sel)
  Hehe, when it comes to chocolate, there's little gray area: It's awesome.

• When I grow up... I want to be a princess. (Dark Chocolate with Candied Rose Petals and Real Gold Flakes)
  Beautiful!

• System Shock (Milk Chocolate with Sour Cherries, Spicy Volcano Cashews, Jalapeños and Fleur de Sel)
  This is going to be spicy, so tell us more about the shock!

Which bar name inspires you?

p.s. The bar in the picture is like the Top 6 this week - it's pretty funny to name a bar Bears, too!