Thorntons is pinning its Christmas hopes on an expansion of its The Snowman and The Gruffalo licences.

The confectioner is expanding its Snowman range with three products: a giant 1kg Snowman (rsp: £50), a Bandstand gift pack (rsp: £10) and Snowballs (rsp: £1.20/60g).

“The Snowman range was a big success last year – the Advent calendar was our biggest selling calendar of the year,” said Thorntons brand communications head Ben Fell. “We want to build on that this year with a bigger range.”

This year, there will be 11 Snowman products, with three exclusive to grocery, including the new snowballs.

Thorntons is also opening up its The Gruffalo chocolates to more outlets. Last year, the range was sold exclusively at Sainsbury’s. This year, the smaller 80g figure (rsp: £3.50) will be exclusive to Sainsbury’s, but the larger 175g one (rsp. £8) and the Advent calendar (rsp: £4) will be available at Thorntons and a range of third-party retailers.

Thorntons is also launching several new Continental products to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Continental brand. For the supermarkets, it has created two single variant boxes – the Aplini box and the Viennese Truffle box (rsp: £5).

It is also launching a Birthday selection box that will offer prizes such as European spa breaks (rsp: £15/425g). Exclusive to its stores will be a heritage box (rsp: £30/735g) that will include previously discontinued chocolates from the Continental range.