Easter Is Saved After British Police Foil An Epic Candy Theft

In the U.S. when Valentine's Day winds down, it takes mere moments for stores to switch out displays of heart-shaped candy for shelves of vibrant Easter candy; we're talking all the favorites like chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, peanut butter eggs, and Peeps. With such a huge, sugary array, Americans might think they reign supreme when it comes to a love of Easter candy — but this holiday is an even bigger deal in the U.K. In the month or more leading up to Easter, British stores feature multiple massive displays of themed sweetsand giant, chocolate eggs. Folks in the U.K. even get more time off from school and work for the holiday, giving them precious, extra days to devour all those goodies.

This Easter candy fervor explains why when someone in Telford, England plans a daring heist of valuable goods, they aren't going after diamonds or rare works of art, but a massive cache of Cadbury chocolates. The Guardian reports that the West Mercia Police Department arrested Joby Poole on February 11th after spotting him driving a stolen tractor down a highway, hauling a huge storage container. That container held 200,000 Cadbury Crème Eggs — the chocolate candy with a tooth-achingly-sweet filling that looks like the inside of a real egg. The police estimate the value of the stolen chocolate at roughly £40,000, or $48,000. That's nothing, of course, compared to the countless broken hearts on Easter morning if Poole had succeeded.

The West Mercia Police Department announced the theft and arrest in a series of tweets, beginning with the modest declaration that their officers "helped save Easter." From there, the police department let the dad jokes fly, calling the theft "eggs-travagent" and referring to the stolen storage unit as a "chocolate collection box." They went on to tweet that the man arrested for the theft was "presumably purporting to be the Easter bunny." Everyone knows that one, cringey dad joke invariably leads to dozens more, and comments on the West Mercia Police posts prove it. One of the best tweets reads, "Must have been a gang of hard boiled crooks to commit such a fowl deed." 

Speaking of fowl deeds, The Guardian shares that the man arrested for the Easter candy theft has pleaded guilty and faces a sentence of as much as two years in jail. (No word on whether inmates are allowed to have Cadbury Crème Eggs in prison.) While some might feel that this is an eggs-essive punishment, diehard chocolate fans may think it's eggs-actly what he deserves.