Repton School in Derbyshire, England, is one of those old British boarding public schools we read about and see featured in films. For most of its history, Repton was a boys’ school and became co-ed only in the 1970s. Founded almost 500 years ago by a rich benefactor, the school has seen many famous men come through its doors and go on to matriculate at Oxford, Cambridge, and other prestigious universities. It has the requisite ivy, stone buildings, and carefully manicured lawns. And, since so many young people were gathered in one place, a major British candy company decided to use Repton as a testing ground for some of its products in the 1920s and ’30s.

This particular company was much loved by most children (and many adults) both then and now. It was the Cadbury company, the maker of chocolates and candies for over 200 years. They are particularly known for their milk chocolates and their cream eggs. Today, they are second only to the Mars company in terms of suppliers of chocolate to a world desperate to get diabetes by ingesting sweet things. At any rate, once upon a time, Cadbury made an agreement with the Repton School to be able to use the school’s more than willing charges to test new recipes for their varieties of chocolate products.

Now, there was more to the deal than merely giving candy to schoolboys. Cadbury also sent questionnaires to the lads before sending the samples. They would ask what the boys liked in chocolate candy, what their favorite colors were, and what their hobbies and out of school interests were. Then, after the samples were consumed, more surveys were sent that were designed to mine the boys’ opinions about packaging, looks, taste, texture, as well as many other questions about the samples the boys tried. And then Cadbury would then collect that data and tweak their products based on the boys’ responses. It was a good (and economical) method of collecting market research from their core target group.

One of those students who sampled the Cadbury and then returned his opinions about the samples was awestruck by being a part of the market testing. Sadly, his time at Repton wasn’t particularly happy for many reasons, not the least of which was that his sister and father had died a few weeks from each other when he was little. Add to that familial grief was the fact that he found Repton to be a harsh place because of what he felt was inappropriate discipline by staff and rampant bullying by older students during his time there. A young boy who had been born in Wales, this particular student nevertheless became fascinated by the idea of a candy company that had the ability to make anything they wished. He dreamed, he later said, of creating a chocolate candy so wonderful, so amazing, that Mr. Cadbury himself would honor him for his creation. For him, a boy with a rich imagination, the type of job that would allow someone to make candy for a living, to bring joy to thousands of people seemed like a dream job. However, there was one other career besides chocolatier that also equally beckoned, and, fortunately for us, he grew up to answer that call.

But author Roald Dahl would never forget the sheer joy of taking part in Cadbury’s market research, and he would grow up to turn that experience into the story you know as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.