The eagerness to find 100 oversized Easter eggs during a nationwide hunt, which formed part of the Whittaker’s Big Egg Hunt for Starship Children’s Hospital, was somewhat reminiscent of the urgency to find golden tickets to Willie Wonker’s chocolate factory.
Social media pages went frantic during the month-long event as adults and children searched far-and-wide to find the giant eggs. Fortunately the giant eggs weren’t edible so egg hunters didn’t have to fear that their glutton for all-things-chocolate would result in another Violet Beauregarde incident. For those of you who can’t recall, Violet’s glutton for sugar resulted in her being trundled off to the juicing room at Wonka’s factory.
Old Collegian Sam Mathers (Hall 1998-2002) was invited to paint one of the 70cm tall fibreglass Whittaker’s Big Egg Hunt eggs along with other famous kiwi artists. Sam’s egg documents the history, characteristics and genetic makeup of the largest birds in the world (the ostrich and the now extinct elephant bird and moa).
Sam said he used a multi-media technique involving hundreds of layers of paint as well as markings, scratches and drips to illustrate the depth of history of these large birds, which he then worked back into with oil sticks, graphite and inked illustrations.
Sam’s egg, along with a hundred other eggs, was distributed around Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Egg hunters who were successful in their hunt were entered into a draw to win a 340g 18ct Whittaker’s Gold Slab made by Partridge Jewellery.
The egg hunt raised a total of $235,000 from the sale of the 100 giant eggs and Whittaker’s Chocolate.
