Real LCA

It says so in the constitution, right next to the part that says every American can mount a pair of bear arms on their wall.

But in all seriousness, I suspect I wasn't the only person who always believed London was where the film took place. Like I said before, I don't suspect I was the only person who as a child thought the film took place in the United Kingdom, and while the filmmaker claims to have set out to produce a film set in a neutral location, the facts of the case would say otherwise. All the data available to us only serves to demonstrate just how fabricated the case for a fictitious Anglo-American setting is and how the only logical conclusion seems to be that Burtonville is a British town that is just a bit too 'Merican. But hey, there are even more strange ethnic and cultural enclaves in the real world for this hypothesis to be dismissed as illogical.

But, as we wrap up the first volume of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar, there is just one thing that still bothers me; why is Charlie's town covered in snow while the Salt Family Manor in County Buckinghamshire is not.

First thing's first, I already covered this discrepancy in Reflection/Reasoning for our Findings, however I want to go into more detail in this final instalment before moving on. I should also point out that this is something that probably belonged in Counter-Counter Point, but the question still stands that if Charlie's town is in Greater London, why is the town covered in snow while County Buckinghamshire is shown as lush and sunny? Even at their farthest points from each other, Greater London and County Buckinghamshire are only about 35 miles apart, meaning any snow that would fall upon Greater London would most likely fall upon County Buckinghamshire. Now, while this might sound obvious to some, it should be stated that cities as compact human settlements produce much more heat than more sparsely populated areas, due to the immense human activity, be that from personal vehicles, public transportation, commercial industry or energy being generated for public and private use. This applies to all cities, but in Greater London's case, this heat actually prevents it from having piles upon piles of snow falling upon it in the winter.

As we can see in this image from the UK's Met Office, the average winter temperature in London from 1981 to 2010 was 2°C to 3°C, or 35.6°F to 37.4°F, well above the 0°C or 32°F needed for water to remain frozen. And additionally, the areas surrounding the urban core immediately drop in temperature, yet notably not enough for water to remain frozen.

We can also see in this second map from the Met Office that London is one of the regions of the UK with the lowest amount of annual snowfall days, having an average of less than 10 days per year, during the time the events of the film would have taken place. This makes sense due to the fact that the heat generated by the residents of London, and the city itself, would prevent snow from piling up in the urban core, let alone even allow for a snowstorm to form over the city. Also, this would most likely be a gut punch to the storm that blanketed Burtonville in snow as it expanded, the heat of Greater London would dissipate it as it expanded deeper into the hot urban core that the storm would be nothing more than a few dark clouds once it reached the Salt Family Manor in County Buckinghamshire, just as we see in the film.

Now, admittedly, the main reason why there is no snow on the grounds of the Salt Family Manor in County Buckinghamshire is because of negligent oversight on the part of the filmmakers for not taking the timeline the film set up into consideration, considering the scenes that takes place there would have occurred during late January, one of the coldest times of the year. But there might still be an explanation for this discrepancy to be found within the film, and for that we need to take another look at the map from the prop newspaper.

As you can see, the areas to the north and east of where London should be are designated as BLEAK, nothing out of the ordinary for rural southeast England during the end of January, but if we take a look around where Parkenton is, which is where the real life London is located, we see that the weather has been downgraded to MILD and much of the most densely populated part of Greater London is covered by a ring which seems to be correlated to the MILD designation. As I said before, the heat of cities tends to keep them warmer than their surrounding rural areas, and seeing as the icon for both designation are clouds, perhaps the designation has something to do with the amount of snowfall the region is going to receive. Basically, it's County Essex and County Hertfordshire to the northeast of Greater London that receives snow while the heat from the city's core dissipates the snowstorms from expanding westward, thus preventing snowfall from building up in County Buckinghamshire but still allowing some snow to build up on the periphery of Greater London, where Burtonville is shown to be located.

There is also the fact that in between the Tropic of Cancer and the Artic Circle, the northern Temperate Zone, which is where the UK is located, winds blow from west to east, meaning that whatever snow storm is affecting Charlie's town and East London would also be blown away from the direction of the Home Counties to the west by the direction of the wind.

And one final point on the weather, while I have already called out the filmmakers for making County Buckinghamshire look like a spring meadow in late January with bright green grass and blooming trees, they might not have forgotten about the literal storm brewing over East London after all. As I have mentioned in a previous post, in the introductory shot of the Salt Family Manor right before the Salt's television interview, if you look at the right side of the screen, you can see a dark cloud amassing beyond the manor house to the East, the same direction which Greater London is relative to County Buckinghamshire.

We can also tell that the Salt Family Manor faces southward due to the fact that when we analyze the direction the shadows on the grounds point towards, just like we did with Charlie's town to uncover its exact location, we gain more evidence to support the previous hypothesis. If we analyze the opening shot of the Salt Family Manon we see the shadows being cast, primarily by the trees, point in the opposite direction of the storm, to the northwest to be precise. Which is exactly what we would expect in a situation where the camera is pointing northwards during the morning.

On top of that, there seems to be no shadows caused by natural light inside The Armoury, the room in which the Salts give their interview and all the scenes of their family life during the subsequent flashback sequences take place in. This makes sense as the windows to their left face northwards, meaning that sunlight does not directly enter the room via those windows to cast well-defined shadows inside, which only confirms the position of the Salt Family Manor with respect to Charlie's town even more.

It's once you put all of these pieces together that everything begins to make more sense. While Charlie's town and the Salt family manor are not all that far apart from each other, there are forces blocking the extreme weather that Charlie experiences in the winter from reaching Veruca's home. And those forces are none other than the metropolis of London and the heat she generates, preventing snowfall from falling down onto the rest of the city, and the wind currents keeps the remaining storm from reaching too deep into County Buckinghamshire by blowing the storm towards the North Sea.

Now, one final thing I feel I should point out is that there are mountains north of Charlie's town, which might be called the White Edge Mountains as that is a mountain ridge mentioned in the same newspaper page where the map showing the location of Charlie's town put it near a place that looks oddly like County Essex.

I say this because even though England is known for its meadowy hills, true mountains are a rarity in the constituency country, and those that do exist are mostly found in the north and west, not the southeast where London is.

Oddly enough, the green areas in the real world which was demonstrated as being the best site for the location of Charlie's town-

Hainault Forest County Park,

Havering Country Park (Image shows the area around where Burtonville should be located, with Central London in the background),

and Fairlop Waters Country Park-are shown to actually be quite hilly in pictures, but those lumps on the earth are no where near as high as the mounts shown in the film.

On top of that, there are towns called Harold Hill and Noak Hill close to where Charlie's town should be, meaning that, at least, hills were on the minds of locals when it came to naming their settlements, for what its worth.

But, in fact, that is why this location was the best option to be the location of Charlie's town. Because the space north of Romford Road is so vast, there could be a small chain of mountains that would act as a northern shield for Charlie's town while also not impeding or preventing the construction of real world roads, like Bournebridge Lane, Manor Road and the B175. And let's say that more space had to be taken up in order to make the mountains fit there, all of those roads are just country roads that, if they didn't exist, would not truly impede the movement from those tiny County Essex towns they service into Greater London.

Now, some of you might balk at the idea of Charlie's town being in Greater London if the mountains that mark its northern frontier don't exist in the real world, but then again, an entire fictional country, Loompaland, apparently exists in the film's universe so perhaps mountains north of London when such things don't exist in real life aren't the most ridiculous thing one needs to accept when it comes to this film, but I digress.

And so, we have finally reached the end of our analysis and we can positively answer the question of where Charlie's town is located: In the United Kingdom, in the constituency country of England, in the Greater London region, in the London Borough of Redbridge, and in the Ward of Hainault to be precise.

Despite the claims that Charlie's town is set in a fable-like location devoid of any real-world connections, all the signs pointed towards the fact that Charlie lives in London due to the Britishness of the entire setting. And, in the most blunt terms, all of the American stuff shown to exist in his town, instead of being evidence of a fictional Anglo-American setting, just amounts to the biggest coincidence in the history of humanity.

And, of course, the most earthshattering revelation this entire analysis uncovered...

Charlie and Veruca are Compatriots.

But, if you still feel the findings of this analysis do not pass muster, please mail all your disagreements in writing to the following address.

Willy Wonka

1-133 Factory Street

BURTONVILLE

RM5 2DP

United Kingdom

Sidebar #14.1: Alright, final Sidebar for the volume. So, that string of letters and numbers before United Kingdom in the address for Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory is a UK postal code. Similar to zip codes in the US, postal codes help the Royal Mail know where exactly to deliver a certain piece of mail in the UK. As for how the specific postal code shown above was chosen, the first half of the code refers to the postcode district which covers much of the empty space in the real world which was determined to be Charlie's town. After some research, it was determined most of the land in question is located in the postcode area RM, or Romford, postal code, more specifically RM5.

However, a significant portion of the empty land determined to be the location of Burtonville is located in an entirely different postcode area, with the other portion found in the borders of postcode area IG, or the Ilford postcode area. Interestingly enough, this area most likely got its name in part or completely from the nearby town of Chigwell as it is not named IL or IF after Ilford. Additionally, the area of IG which borders RM5 is another postcode district covering Burtonville, IG7, which while also a candidate for the postcode district for Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, is ultimately much smaller than RM5, therefore less likely to be the correct postcode. However, one could argue that IG7 is the postcode district for the Bucket home, yet their postcode is much harder to pinpoint as their home is on the outskirt of town, farther away from where human settlements exist.

And 2DP was selected as the postcode sector due to the fact that that code services locations along the A1113, or Whalebone Lane, which I have to say is another street name that sounds like it belongs in a Tim Burton film, and Romford Road. While I am operating under the presumption that these roads lie behind Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, they might very well have been some of the roads that would have passed perpendicularly between First Street when traveling from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory to the Bucket home.

Nevertheless, the area covered by the 2DP postcode sector is still the best option for the location of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, therefore I combined the postcode from the area with the address given to the factory on the back cover of the Factory Manual and Instruction Handbook, 1-133 Factory Street, Burtonville, and the format for UK addresses in order to construct an acuate British postal address.

And so, that's a wrap for the inaugural volume of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar. We here at Real-LCA-Blog hope you enjoyed your experience with us throughout these instalments and that you will join us in the future for future installments of this series. There are so many more questions that have yet to be answered, as well as observations that need to be elaborated and analyzed, such as why is Charlie's town so dreary? We discussed the weather in this corner of Greater London and how the weather in East London didn't affect the Salts in County Buckinghamshire, but we never discussed what caused the weather in Burtonville to be the way that it is in the first place. But hey, that's a question for another time.

And before we wrap this up, please enjoy this piece of art summarizing the findings of this inquiry titled The Very British Charlie Bucket.

Yet, when it comes to the events of the film, the MP for Ilford North during the events of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket contest was the former Borough mayor and Labour Party member Linda Perham who served in the position for nearly a decade, from 1997 to 2005.

Now, while Charlie's town and the surrounding area definitely fit the description of what a Labour Party stronghold historically looked like, some more digging into the history of Ilford North uncovered a strange trend, that the MPs before and after Perham were not Labour, but Conservative.

From 1978 to 1997, Ilford North was represented in Parliament by Vivian Bendall. He is the man on the left, pictured here with the reason why the Bucket family and the rest of the residents of Charlie's town are so poor, former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (but that's a whole other story).

The constituency was also represented by a Conservative MP, Lee Scott, from 2005 to 2015, with nothing really notable about his tenure as MP for Ilford North other than demonstrating that Charlie's parliamentary constituency happens to flip back and forward between parties, acting as sort of a bellwether of where British politics is heading.

When you step back and view things from afar, you can see that Bendall entered office in a by-election that acted as a precursor to the Thatcher revolution a year later, whereas Perham was elected the same year Tony Blair came to power following nearly two decades of Tory rule and mass discontent with the direction Thatcherite policies were taking the country. Lee was elected around the time when the traditional Labour Party voting base, think of working class people like the Buckets and the rest of the residents of Burtonville, realized that Blair's New Labour policies meant a continuation of Thatcherite austerity, only this time with red paint rather than blue, and became disaffected with the Labour party, resulting in the Torries' return to power a few years later.

Now, while Streetling's 2015 victory might seem to break this rule as the Conservatives are notoriously still in charge, this election also marked something of a milestone in regards to the world of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The 2015 UK General Election was the first nationwide election where Charlie himself would have been old enough to vote for his MP, making it one of the first elections where Millennials were a significant voting demographic. And as recent reports would indicate, Millennials, especially those who grew up as impoverished as Charlie, are not lining up to vote for the Conservatives anytime soon, meaning their chances at winning elections in the future dwindle every day.

However, I should mention that the first election Charlie could vote in was actually a two-for-one special, on Thursday, May 22, 2014, London local elections and European Parliament elections were held on the same day. The London local elections were particularly historic for the London Borough of Redbridge as Charlie’s first ever vote would have helped flip the Ward of Hainault from having three Conservative councilors to having three Labour councilors, all of which helped flip the London Borough of Redbridge from no party having overall control to Labour control, the first time that had ever happened in the borough.

The European Parliament elections were also historic in the sense that while the anti-EU and xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party swept much of the UK, becoming the largest party in the UK delegation to the European parliament, calculations determined that the London Borough of Redbridge survived the sirens call of hate and actually voted for Labour.

Speaking of demographics, the London Borough of Redbridge, and the Ward of Hainault respectively, also highlight the changes seen on the streets of London as immigrants from all over the world come and settle in the British capital in search of better opportunities, like Grandpa Joe and Bill the Shopkeeper before them. While the London Borough of Redbridge as a whole is currently home to a plurality of Muslims, mostly people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, the Ward of Hainault, on the edge of Greater London is unsurprisingly still mostly populated with people from the White British demographic. In fact, this is something that can be seen in the film, as most of the residents of Burtonville, including the significant, mostly white, American population, are well, white-English speaking individuals.

While there are some people of African and Middle Eastern or South Asian origin residing in Burtonville, their numbers are dwarfed by the White residents, something that is much more common in the neighboring London Borough of Havering. Which is actually something that originally guided me to setting Charlie's town solely there before realizing that Redbridge would suffice in that area.

This map from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine breaks down the general ethnic makeup of Greater London by borough and if you look in the northeast corner, you see that the color green, representing the White British demographic, is most dominant there, even where the Ward of Hainault should be. There are other colors present in that area, most notably yellow, representing White Non-British people, such as the Irishman Grandpa Joe and the various other White Americans and Canadians, which together make up the supermajority of both the Ward of Hainault in the real world and Burtonville in the film. But there is also a splattering of purple, representing the Black British population, like Bill the Shopkeeper, and blue, representing South Asian British people, who also show up on screen, although obviously not as much as White British and White Non-British people do. And so oddly enough, although perhaps not if you accept the Ward of Hainault as the location of Charlie's town, it is in that order, White British, White Non-British, Black British and South Asian British, that the different ethnic communities of Charlie's town could be ranked from most prevalent to least prevalent.

The makeup of the region is best summed up by a BBC News post covering the 2001 general election in which they describe the parliamentary constituency of Ilford North as "inhabited by lower middle-class skilled non-manual workers." They also describe the Ward of Hainault, the ward where Charlie's town would be located, as an "area of council housing to the north [...] where Labour has traditionally found its strongest support," something that lines up with the rows of social housing homes built during the Postwar period that were then sold off as private homes during the Thatcher years until the local council bought up the homes together to ensure that the residents would still have a place to live, that we see in the film. But apart from the marginally left-wing Ward of Hainault, as the post goes on to explain, "[Ilford] North has always tended to be the more Conservative of the two Ilford constituencies," meaning compared to its southern neighbor, the aply named Ilford South, Charlie's parliamentary constituency typically elected Tory candidates to parliament. Also, apparently before the MP for Ilford North during the events of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Linda Perham, got elected in 1997, Labour had won the constituency only two times before, in 1974, only for the aforementioned Vivian Bendall to win it back for the Conservatives four years later, and in 1945 when Winston Churchill and the Tories lost power following the end of World War II. On top of that, the Conservative Party, and its predecessor the Unionist Party won the Ilford constituency, the predecessor of Ilford North and Ilford South, in every UK general election from 1918 to 1945 when the constituency was divided into the two constituencies we have today.

This historic Conservative streak can also be seen on the local level as the London Assembly constituency that Charlie's town is a part of, Havering and Redbridge, has most recently elected a Tory to represent them in City Hall, something that has transpired in the last six elections since the creation of the legislative body in 2000, or for as long as Charlie has been alive.

During that same time, the Ward of Hainault has voted for the Conservative candidate for Mayor, including the infamous Boris Johnson, in every single election since 2004.

And speaking of Johnson, we have yet to cover how Charlie's town voted in the most impactful British election to date, the 2016 European Union membership referendum. On June 23, 2016, the entire United Kingdom held a referendum election asking its citizens whether the country should remain a member of or leave the EU, and after decades of mobilizing for such a referendum from nationalist, and at many times outright xenophobic, forces in British politics, the issue was put in front of voters where the Leave side won 51.89% of the vote. Now, had it not been for Greater London, the Leave margin of victory would have been much larger as 59.9% of the area's citizens voted Remain, with some boroughs even voting more than 70% for Remain.

And while Charlie's home borough, the London Borough of Redbridge, voted overwhelmingly to Remain, a deeper look reveals that his parliamentary constituency, Ilford North, actually voted Leave, with the results resembling the broader UK vote, 52.5% in favor of leaving the EU and 47.5% voting to stay in the EU. This narrow victory for the Leave campaign was not without an attempt by the Remain campaign to at least win the parliamentary constituency, with MP Wes Streeting himself being a Remainer and urging his constituents to vote the same. And, to get back to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe, the Remain campaign would have lost Ilford North, and in a sense the whole country, even with the most famous candymakers coming out against it.

Leaving the EU has been disastrous for British businesses, especially those who sell their products to EU member countries, just as Willy Wonka is shown to do with Germany comprising one of his key markets. Therefore, it only makes sense that Willy Wonka, or more likely Charlie, would have gone out to the public and urged them to vote Remain in order to keep the cost of Wonka candies down because the alternative would have meant Wonka and Charlie would have to fill out an avalanche of complex forms just to ship his candy to France, or let alone neighboring Ireland. And while there were hordes of nationalist British businessmen who pushed for the UK to leave the EU, Charlie, but specifically Wonka had what it took to tell an emotional story for why it was important to ignore those voices and remain in the EU. It was not just that his business would be effected negatively by Brexit, but as a child of mixed-heritage, growing up with an American mother and a British father, something that would resonate with many residents of Burtonville as previously established, Willy Wonka had the credibility to speak on the humanitarian disaster Brexit would reap for people in British-European relationships, be they romantic or even platonic, as those Europeans might not be able to remain in the UK if the Leave vote won. Therefore, even though politics is not really touched on in the film, its pretty clear that Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket would have been key endorsements for and supporters of the Remain campaign for their celebrity status would help spread the campaign's message, as well as enshrine their business prospects if the Remain campaign won (and lets face it, neither of them seem to harbor any xenophobic tendencies apart from enslaving the Oompa-Loompas in the factory that is, but we've already gone down too many parenthetical rabbit holes today and tackling that issue with the focus and delicate care it deserves would require an entire Unwrapping the Wonka Bar segment).

Now, when it comes to infrastructure, while the housing accommodations in Charlie's town are far from impressive, as seen by the hordes of identical Greystone houses, a relic of the era of social housing tenements built after World War II for the millions of working-class Brits who needed a home. However, the town is right next door to Hainault Station, the local station for the world-famous London Underground and the Golden Ticket for all the residents of Burtonville to escape their dreary existence for the glamor of Central London, even if only for a few hours every month or so. And with such a prime location, it seems like teenage Charlie was set with easy transportation to the heart of London once he was old enough to leave his town on his own, that is if Willy Wonka even let him out of the factory to explore the city.

And speaking of Charlie, after some research into the local healthcare system, I believe I have found the hospital where Charlie would have been born in. Currently, there are two hospitals surrounding the Ward of Hainault, King George's Hospital in Ilford and Queen's Hospital in Romford in the London Borough of Havering.

Now, Queen's Hospital can immediately be eliminated from consideration since it did not open until 2006, after the events of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory took place and thus way after Charlie was born. Now, before we give the title of Hospital where Charlie Bucket was born to King George's Hospital, this issue of hospitals opening and closing got me thinking of a lesson I learned back when we were analyzing the accents of Charlie's town, that you cannot take data that spans many years as a singular set. And so, I looked into former hospitals that were once open in the area and that was when I came across Harold Wood Hospital and Oldchurch Hospital, with both of them also located in Romford. But now that I had three candidates for the hospital where Charlie was born, I had to narrow those down to one, and I did that by finding out which hospital was the nearest to where Burtonville would be located.

Now, once I had a distance and travel time for the trips to each of the hospitals, I realized something important, I was dealing with travel times for a personal vehicle and as can clearly be seen in the film, Mr. and Mrs. Bucket don't have their own car to drive around in, not that they would even have time and money to go on road trips anyway. But seeing as how the shortest walk would still take over an hour and Mrs. Bucket would be going into labor in this scenario, walking was not a viable option, leaving public transport as the only method for getting the Bucket parents to the hospital. While I mentioned that there is a London Underground station close by to where Charlie's town would be located, only one of the three routes would require the Bucket parents to use the subway, and that route would still be the longest one, so not just can that hospital be eliminated from the running, I can confirm that Mr. and Mrs. Bucket would not have used the London Underground to get to the hospital. No, instead the Bucket parents would have to take the bus, with the closest hospital being nearly an hour-long bus ride away, which seems like a long time for a mother in labor to reach the hospital, but once again this only goes to show the utter depravation and poverty the Buckets experience puts them through and how life is nearly unbearable for them. Without their own vehicle, the Bucket parents would be reliant on public transportation to get them to their destination, which in this case would be none other than King George Hospital in Ilford.

And finally, there is one final piece of evidence that goes to show how well the Ward of Hainault serves as the location of Charlie's town, and this evidence comes to us directly from the film. We are first introduced to Charlie Bucket as he stands on the corner of First Street and a street running perpendicular to First Street watching the red Wonka trucks leave the factory courtyard and deliver boxes of Wonka Bars to the next leg of their journey. Now, while we do not see in which direction the Wonka trucks drive off towards, to the east or to the west, on screen, we can actually tell by looking at the direction of Charlie's head and body.

We see in the film that Charlie stands at the corner of First Street and the perpendicular street and moves his head from left to right, following each truck as they make it to the intersection, all without moving his body.

While the first and second turnings of Charlie's head is blocked by one of the Wonka trucks we are actually treated to the end result of the second turn when the truck moves out of the way. He shifts his head from his right back to his left to watch the next truck pass by.

We are then given our first complete shot of Charlie's head moving from left to right, following a Wonka truck moving up First Street.

And we are treated to the same action once again, only for it to look like something catches Charlie's attention and/or he realizes something and he rushes back home soon after.

Charlie then runs across the street to the safety of his home, but in that shot we are treated to something, or should I say nothing. While its only been a few seconds since the red Wonka trucks passed by, they are no where to be seen.

They obviously either drove eastward on the street running perpendicular to First Street or westward on either the street running perpendicular to First Street or Pickwicket Avenue, therefore the only question left is in which direction did the trucks drive off towards?

While the film does not give us a direct answer, we can actually tell which direction the Wonka trucks drove off towards from the movements of Charlie's head. Since the western-facing streets (remember that the Bucket home is on the northern edge of Greater London) are the ones Charlie is facing, and since all Charlie does to follow the trucks' movements is move his head from left to right, meaning he never turns his body all the way back to look at something travel down the eastern-facing street, we are left with the realization that the red Wonka trucks either went down the street perpendicular to First Street or Pickwicket Avenue.

The trucks probably went down Pickwicket Avenue as Charlie's head always moves from left to right, meaning he turns to look towards the street on the right side of his view from his position on the corner of First Street and the street perpendicular to it, instead of right to center, which would be the street on the left side of his view, the street perpendicular to First Street, but we can never truly be sure beyond the fact that the trucks traveled westward.

Plus, there's is so much of the eastern end of the street running perpendicular to First Street that is not obstructed by buildings or a brick wall as compared to the western end and Pickwicket Avenue that the trucks could still technically be there during the time of the shot but are just being blocked by the previously mentioned structures. Therefore, had the trucks traveled down the eastern end of the street running perpendicular to First Street, there would have been a discrepancy as there were no trucks on that end in sight when Charlie is running home.

However, what really matters from this quick analysis is that we know the red Wonka trucks drove westward, and from what we know about what was in the trucks, boxes of Wonka Bars ready to head onto the next leg of their journey toward store shelves all over the world, we are all but told where most of these trucks are headed to; the airport, Heathrow Airport to be precise. Now, Heathrow Airport is in the London Borough of Hillingdon, which is to the west of the London Borough of Redbridge, something that checks out with the direction we have established the trucks drove towards. However, driving through the heart of London to get to Heathrow Airport on the type of city streets that the Wonka trucks are shown to be on would take hours on end, so going directly west would not make any logical sense. There however is a faster route to Heathrow Airport that involves going around the urban areas of Greater London, the world famous London Orbital Motorway, or the M25.

The M25 is the fastest way to get from one end of London to the other, first opened in 1986, a year after Willy Wonka opened his first store on Cherry Street, it started off as a three-lane highway, but later expanded to consist of four, five or six lanes in both directions depending on the area of the highway. But even with all of the extensions over the years, the sheer population of Greater London and the surrounding counties have turned the M25 into one of the most congested roads in the world, resulting in it earning the nicknames "Britain's biggest car park" and "The road to hell." Yet, despite all that, the fastest route from the London Borough of Redbridge to Heathrow Airport still relies on mostly traveling on the M25.

As you can see from the image of the route from where Burtonville is located to Heathrow Airport on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 with the vehicle departing at 5PM, which one could argue is the date and time when Charlie stands out on the corner of First Street and the street running perpendicular to First Street and watches the red Wonka trucks leave the factory yard, the route to the trucks' destination matches up with what we know about the direction in which the trucks drove off towards.

The road perpendicular to First Street, not pictured here since it does not exist in real life, would eventually take you to Romford Road (the bottom orange and blue line) if you travel westward, just as the red Wonka trucks were demonstrated to have done. This would take the truck drivers to a fork in the road where they would take the left fork onto Pudding Lane (which just sounds like the name of a road in Charlie's town if we're being honest), and after a left turn and short drive on Abridge Road, the drivers would take a right turn onto Chigwell Lane/Rectory Lane and continue on that for a while.

Once the Wonka trucks reached the town of Loughton, they would make a right turn on a roundabout to get onto the A121, a road which first heads up north before making a westwardly turn that forces the Wonka truck drivers to make a left turn onto another roundabout before using yet another roundabout, the Waltham Abbey Interchange, to merge onto the M25.

And from there it is an hour long drive on the M25 from East London to the western edge of Greater London (passing by the Salt Industrial Park in Iver, by the way) before the red Wonka truck drivers get off the highway at Junction 14, the exit for Heathrow Airport, and headed towards whatever terminal the plane scheduled to carry the Wonka Bars to their final location would be departing from.

That’s it for Part 13, join us next time when we finally wrap up this first volume of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar now that we know Charlie’s town is in the UK.

The only London airport offering direct flights to and from Denver at the time was Heathrow Airport, the same one responsible for helping distribute Wonka candies out of the United Kingdom and onto the next leg of their journey before they reach store shelves for purchase by snot-nosed brats all over the world.

An archived edit of the Wikipedia page for Denver International Airport shows that there was one airline offering flights to London, British Airways out of Concourse A, the same airline responsible for shipping most Wonka candies to where they need to go next.

However, on the flight back to the States is where some variety comes into place. On the same January 2005 edit of the Wikipedia page for Heathrow Airport used to determine which airlines could deliver the Wonka Bars packaged at the beginning of the film to their next destination, it is revealed that there are two airlines offering direct flights to Denver, the aforementioned British Airways, departing from Terminal 4, or the American giant United Airlines, departing out of Terminal 3.

Now, there's no way to be sure which airline the Teavees flew back home on as its never addressed in the film or any other material related to the production of the film. However, we can only hope the Teavees flew back to Denver on British Airways because we all know no American airline would have the legroom that 10-foot boy would need after his trip to the taffy puller.

Up next, we have the Beauregardes of Atlanta, Georgia.

When it comes to the Beauregardes, the findings were not all that different either, except for one aspect. While a January 2005 Wikipedia edit reveals that there were two airlines offering direct flights to London out of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, those being none other than British Airways and the Atlanta staple Delta Air Lines, with both airlines departing out of International Concourse E, there is something noteworthy about where the flights head towards.

You see, due to a treaty between the US and the UK regulating air travel between both countries, the Bermuda II Agreement, named so because that's where the American and British transportation department officials met to carve out the details of the original agreement back in 1946, only a certain amount of American cities were designated "gateway cities," or cities that could be served by both American and British airlines. Under this agreement, New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport could be served non-stop from Heathrow, but not Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. All flights coming to and from Atlanta had to go through Gatwick Airport, London's second largest airport. The UK, due to its membership in the European Union was actually taken to court by the EU over this deal because EU law dictates that member states cannot have individual bilateral deals with other countries outside the EU as the union's goals are to improve trade between all members equally and the European Court of Justice ruled that the Bermuda II Agreement violated European law. The United States and the European Union later crafted a new deal that regulates air travel, the EU–US Open Skies Agreement and as we all know, the United Kingdom would never again get frustrated at the European Union and her laws.

Unlike Heathrow Airport which is located inside Greater London, in the town of Longford in the London Borough of Hillingdon to be precise, Gatwick Airport is located in the town of Horley in County Surrey, an exurb of Greater London but not part of London by any means. This means that it will take longer to get to London from Gatwick Airport than from Heathrow Airport, meaning that it was even more inconvenient for the Beauregardes to get to their London hotel the day before the tour of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and adjust their bodies to the time difference than it was for the Teavees. And we all know that proximity to comfort would be high up on the Beauregarde's list of needs as you just know Ms. Beauregarde requires her 8-hours of beauty sleep before doing anything.

And yes, the trip back to Atlanta from London would have seen the Beauregardes have to take the extra-long trip from their London hotel to Gatwick Airport where their two options would have again been either British Airways or Delta Air Lines, with both departing from the North Terminal. But, seeing how flexible Violet was as she left the factory, the lack of legroom on an American airline wouldn't have been an issue as it would have been for the Teavees.

And finally, we have the Gloops of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Now, the Gloops have the most options to fly to and from London being as they are the only other visitors in question to be from Europe. On the one hand, there are flights to Heathrow Airport offered by British Airways and the main German airline Lufthansa out of Düsseldorf Airport and flights back offered by those same airlines out of Terminal 1 for the former and Terminal 2 for the latter.

On the other hand, the Gloops could have also flown into one of London's smaller airports, more specifically London Stansted Airport in the town of Stansted Mountfitchet in County Essex. Fun fact, London Stansted is the second closest airport in regards to travel time to Charlie's town in the London area.

Now, since this airport is so small, it did not cater to many of the larger airlines, instead becoming a hub for smaller, discount airlines. This is relevant as the only known airline flying to and from Düsseldorf Airport to London Stansted Airport was AirBerlin, a low-cost airline that actually went bankrupt in 2017.

But now, I have to say, as I looked into how the Gloops would have gotten to London, I had a realization, which was just how close their home was to their destination in the grand scheme of things. I looked up the driving distance between Düsseldorf and London and discovered it was about 360 miles of driving. To put that into perspective, that is slightly less than a drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix in neighboring Arizona.

In reality, this means that if the Gloops were to drive from Düsseldorf to London it would, at most, be an eight and a half hour drive, something that would be a pain in the arsch, for sure, but still a very doable road trip.

That was until I realized one important thing, the Gloops are European, and to them any trip farther than 100 miles might as well be a legendary journey to the Gates of Hell or Mount Olympus and back that the Muses would sing about for centuries afterwards.

But this realization of the Gloops' Europeanness reminded me of another way Europeans get around when they need to travel long distances, they take the train. So, I started looking for a way to get from Düsseldorf to London via train, and I believe that I found a way that it could have been done. While their train might have departed from Düsseldorf, the best concrete information from the time that I could find meant that the Gloops might have needed to travel about 28 miles south by car or by a smaller train to the German city of Cologne and it was there that they could have boarded a Thalys high speed train that would have taken them to Brussels, Belgium.

It is in Belgium that the Gloops would have had to change trains, instead boarding a Eurostar high speed train that connects Brussels to London, via Lille, France.

We know that the Eurostar trip from Brussels to London would take around two hours and twenty minutes, but while we don't know how long the Cologne to Brussels train ride would have taken in 2005, we can assume it would have been around the same time length. This means that the Gloops would have spent around five and a half hours traveling from Düsseldorf to London, making the train a much faster mode of transportation than driving, and also cheaper than flying, which is probably why the Gloops used this mode of transportation instead.

That’s it for this installment of Unwrapping The Wonka Bar: The Leftovers. Make sure to keep up with Unwrapping The Wonka Bar, click here for Part 13 when we delve into the area where Charlie’s town would be located and discuss how the politics and infrastructure in the area would shape the lives of the Buckets and the rest of the residents.

It is clear that there is some storm off to the east, in the direction of London, that did not make it over the Salt Family Manor in County Buckinghamshire, which explains why the ground is free of snow there while Charlie's town is covered in it. We also know that the direction in which the dark clouds hang over towards is in fact the east as in an internal shot of the Salt Family Manor you notice a distinct lack of natural light while journalists interview the Salts.

This is because the windows in the Armoury, the room where all the internal shots of the Salt Family Manor were filmed in, are facing northward, meaning direct sunlight cannot enter as the sun's rays point towards northwest in the morning, north at midday and northeast in the afternoon, resulting in them being blocked by the rest of the manor house.

But, back to the purpose of this installment of this volume. With the London Borough of Redbridge having been designated as the location of Charlie's town, I began to research the area and what I found only seem to confirm that this borough was in fact where Burtonville is located. The London Borough of Redbridge is in East London, an area infamous for its poverty and at first glance that sounded just like the type of place Charlie's town was located. And as I looked deeper into the specifics of not just the borough, but the subdivision of the borough where Burtonville would be located, the Ward of Hainault, the economic situation there only sounded more and more like what we saw in the film. In a blog post from the British newspaper, The Guardian, from 2012 titled Deprivation and poverty in London: get the data, we can see in one pictograph that the Ward of Hainault is colored in dark orange, which according to the pictograph indicates a higher than average "Level of Depravation." And while the depravation is not as bad as in the urban core of East London, it is clearly one of the most deprived wards on the edge of Northeast London.

An additional pictograph included in the blog post also elaborated on the rates of child poverty in the boroughs of Greater London, something rather relevant when discussing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And once again we see that the Ward of Hainault is one of the most affected wards on the northern end of Northeast London, with a child poverty rate of somewhere between 40.1% and 49.9%.

I did some additional research into the topic of child poverty in London and discovered a 2022 report by the Trust for London, "an independent charitable foundation established in 1891 to tackle poverty and inequality in London," which claims that child poverty in the London Borough of Redbridge is currently at 40%, which lines up with the results from a decade prior.

But, with such data having been collected well after the events of the film transpired, that is to say once Charlie and the Buckets moved into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and were no longer the victims of the chronic poverty that plagued their town, let alone the fact that Charlie would already be an adult by then, I looked for data from closer to the events of the film. I was able to find a report spanning 10 years created by HM Revenue and Customs, a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the payment of some forms of state support among other duties, and published by the Greater London Authority, the local city government, that started back in 2006, a year after the events of the film took place. In short, the report states that 36.1% of all children, and 37.9% of children below the age of 16 in the Ward of Hainault reside in poverty, meaning that over one out of every three children in the ward experienced poverty, which definitely sounds like Charlie's town and Charlie's own experience before becoming Willy Wonka's heir.

These atrocious economics stats for the Ward of Hainault are also not coincidences either. In short, there is a well documented history of this area of London struggling economically through the entire 21st century. As you can see in this pictograph posted on the blog of Alasdair Rae, a Professor at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield, the Ward of Hainault was clearly one of the most "deprived" areas on the edge of Northeast London in 2005, the year that the majority of the events depicted in the film transpired in.

The outlook didn't get better as the years went on either, as we can see in these two pictographs produced by Chris Gale from University College London's Department of Geography, which was posted on Mapping London. The Ward of Hainault is ranked a 2 in which a ranking of 1 is considered to be the "most deprived" in both 2007 and 2010.

In short, with such an economically deprived community located in the real-world Ward of Hainault, it makes sense that Charlie's town would be located here. For not just does the real world data reflect what we see within the Bucket family, it also reflects what we see with the rest of the residents of Charlie's town. While the rest of the residents of Burtonville are far from being as destitute as the Buckets are, they definitely are not living affluent lives.

For example, the rest of the residents live in social housing, most likely council homes, built during the Postwar period.

And nearly everyone drive vehicles that well-over a decade old.

I should also mention that social housing refers to public housing built in the UK so that people who cannot afford to buy a home from private developers can get one built by the state so that they do not go one to become homeless. And council homes are a subset of social housing where everything is built and run by the local government, such as the  Redbridge London Borough Council, the legislative arm of the London Borough of Redbridge. The highest peak of social housing construction took place in the 1950s, coinciding with the Postwar era we mentioned before, when, according to an article from sellhousefast.uk on social housing, the government needed another "quick and cheap method of building houses" because the method they were primarily using just wasn't cutting it. The government was also looking for a type of home that was "easier to construct, as England faced a skills shortage," which resulted in the creation of pre-cast reinforced concrete houses, an architectural style which bears striking resemblance to the types of homes built in Charlie's town.

Interestingly enough, PRC homes were found to be "liable to deterioration of [the] reinforcing steel and the cracking of concrete panel [...] as they were extremely cheap" in the 1980s and so their particular construction style was stopped for safety concerns. However, by then, all of the homes in Charlie's town would have been built as we see the structures already standing without any construction crews in sight during Willy Wonka's flashbacks to his childhood in 1975.

All of this is to say that Burtonville seems to be a council estate, a community of social housing homes which makes sense if we consider the town to be a postwar invention where the British and Americans who stayed in the UK after World War II banded together and built a small commuter town on the edge of the London area. All of the homes, even the Bucket's solitary cottage that is detached from the rest of the houses in town, are all made of the same materials. And considering how PRCs are known to deteriorate over long periods of time, it's no wonder why the Bucket home is in the condition it is in, it is a PRC home which time has finally caught up to.

The twisted shape that the materials have morphed into looks like the manifestation of the description of the reenforcing steel deteriorating over time.

And the Bucket home is also shown to consist of cracking concrete panels as well, only matching up with what PRC social housing from the postwar era would look like after decades of wear and tear even more.

And before we wrap up this section, since the biggest reason for why Charlie's town could not be in the UK, let alone the Ward of Hainault, is the significant amount of American influence in the town according to some, it was interesting to see the results of a survey conducted in the London area a few years ago. The British data-analytics firm YouGov published the results of a survey in which they asked London area residents what type of cuisine they preferred, and while the results as a whole say a lot about this great city, the results from the East London and Essex region, which includes the London Borough of Redbridge, indicate that the region's resident's second favorite cuisine is none other than American food.

Now, something like this makes sense since the reason why this region is the only one in the London area with a propensity for American food is because there is a local American community in a town on the edge of Greater London who many most likely run restaurants where they make the food of their native land, just like Grandma used to make. A town which also just so happens to be home to the largest Chocolate factory in the world, and on top of that, a factory that happens to be owned by an American of all things. Now, as to why real world East Londoners who live in a world where Burtonville does not exist have a penchant for American food, I could not tell you why.

And as we wrap up this section, I cannot end this without pointing out this last detail concerning both the film and the real world that only goes to prove that Charlie's town is in the Ward of Hainault. The opening scene of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is all about introducing the audience to a candymaking process only the twisted mind of Willy Wonka could come up with and it all ends with boxes full of said candy labeled, loaded onto the iconic red Wonka trucks and driven off the factory grounds and onto their next destination, which for all those not labeled LONDON, for obvious reasons, must be the airport. Now, there are six airports in the London area, but only one of these had flights to all of the locations that we know Wonka Bars were destined to after they left the factory during the events of the film, London's largest and main international airport, Heathrow Airport.

Sidebar #11.1: Now, we know for a fact that Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory ships Wonka Bars to four other locations besides London, with those being:

New York City, US

Cairo, Egypt

Tokyo, Japan

and Bangkok, Thailand. We do not get a good glimpse of boxes with the BANGKOK label on them in the film, but be do know that a prop DESTINATION sticker was made for the southeast Asian city thanks to a film memorabilia collector taking a picture of their collectable prop and posting it online.

And thanks to Wikipedia edits from January 2005, we can also see that for the most part one airline fulfilled most of Wonka's transportation needs, British Airways, which just so happens to be based out of Heathrow Airport.

This old Wikipedia post reveals that the Wonka Bars heading to the US and Egypt flew to John F. Kennedy International Airport and Cairo International Airport respectively on British Airways planes departing from Terminal 4 whereas those heading to Japan flew to Narita International Airport out of Terminal 1.

While it makes sense that Wonka Worldwide, Inc. and British Airways would craft an exclusive transportation deal together, seeing as both companies would be the face of the United Kingdom in the world of air transportation and confectionary globally, surprisingly, British Airways did not offer flights to every location Willy Wonka needed his candies to get to.

The most notable example of this is Bangkok, Thailand, in which the archived Wikipedia page says was not served by British Airways back in 2005. Instead, air travel from Heathrow to Don Mueang International Airport was managed by Thai Airways International out of Terminal 3.

It should also be mentioned that there were 10 red Wonka Trucks leaving the courtyard at the beginning of the film

and on top of that, it appears that each truck is filled with boxes heading to the same destination, which makes sense as it would save the Airport crewmembers time from having to sort the boxes into different piles before loading them onto the plane headed to their labeled destination.

All of this is to say there are most likely many other locations Willy Wonka's candies get flown to besides the five locations we already know about, such as locations in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and mainland Europe, as his candies are supposed to be known worldwide. And by looking through the destinations that British Airways offered in 2005, I am certain that well over 90% of all transportation of Wonka candies out of the UK is done through British Airways, especially once they started offering flights to Bangkok years later.

That’s it for Part 12, click here for Part 13 when we delve into the area where Charlie’s town would be located and discover how the local politics and makeup of the region reflect on the rest of the country.

From this scene where Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka hover over Charlie's town in the Great Glass Elevator, we get a clear view of the Bucket home and what lies beyond Burtonville's northern border, we see that after the city limits lies an empty field and hills all covered in snow. Now, this fact quickly helps us eliminate one of the remaining options, the London Borough of Enfield for the simple reason that the borough’s namesake, the city of Enfield borders a string of small towns in County Hertfordshire to the north and west of the city of Enfield. There is also the issue that anything to the west of the city of Enfield is too close to central and West London to truly be East London, and this is important not just for the destitute qualities needed for the location of Charlie's town, but for the fact that will be elaborated upon in a later installment of this volume, that Charlie's town and the Salt Family Manor have to be decently separated as they do not share the exact same climate. Therefore, the London Borough of Enfield must be eliminated from consideration.

Had it not been for the Factory Manual, we would not know that Charlie's town has a name, Burtonville, and perhaps we would have been misguided and designated the Buckets, Willy Wonka and the rest of their neighbors as residents of a real-life town on the border between Greater London and County Essex. But because of this, we know that Charlie's town is not a real­-life­ place, for the lack of a better term, and this means that we have to place the town in an empty space somewhere in northeast Greater London in order to not disturb the existence of a real-world town in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe. Now, that by itself does not seem all that hard as there is plenty of empty space in the area where a town could have been built in in an alternate universe without compromising the existence of already existing towns. However, when we take into consideration the prerequisites established by the film, the fact that to the north of the Bucket home lies a baren nothingness limits just where the town could be.

And so, with all of these factors in mind, I set out to study the geographic frontiers of the London Boroughs of Waltham Forrest, Redbridge and Havering and I stand in front of you all now to say that I found four possible options as to where Charlie's town could be located. I will also include an image below of each of the four options consisting of two outlines, a red one indicating where Charlie's town could be located and a blue outline where the empty field north of the Bucket home could be located, so that you all can better visualize how large each option is.

Therefore, let's jump right into these four options and analyze the argument for why Charlie's town could be located here, starting with:

Option #1: Northeast Waltham Forrest

As the London Borough with the shortest northern border with a political subdivision not within Greater London, Option #1 manifested very few options for the location of Charlie's town. It seemed that the London Borough of Waltham Forrest would be outright eliminated from the running at first, that was until I mapped out an area east of the town of Chingford and west of Buckhurst Hill in the neighboring London Borough of Redbrigde. Theoretically, Charlie's town could span an area 0.347 miles2 and the field north of the town could span an area of 0.437 miles2. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that this is an incredibly small area of land for such a sprawling location that we see on screen. With only a bit more than a square mile of space available, the odds that Charlie's town could be in the London Borough of Waltham Forrest are small, but fortunately there are other options available for consideration.

Option #2: Central Redbridge

What makes this location an interesting choice is that there is actually a suburban community just north of where the field could be placed at, but unlike Option #1, we have a more free space to work with to place to possibly place Charlie's town here. An analysis of the area revealed Charlie's town could span an area of 0.905 miles2 while the field north of the town could span an area of 1.613 miles2, a significant increase from the previous option. With more than twice the available space for a possible location as compared with Option #1, Option #2 blows its competitor out of the water. But yet, the cluster of homes just north of the possible location of the field makes this option seem not that much better. Therefore, we must continue our analysis of the other possible locations and see if any of them are a better fit for our search than Option #2.

Option #3: Northeast Redbridge/Northwest Havering

For the first time in our analysis, we now have an option that is both wide enough to feature a town and extends far north enough to feature an open space as was shown in the film. In between the London Borough of Havering and the London Borough of Redbridge lies an uninhabited space where Charlie's town could be located, with an area spanning 0.946 miles2 which would form the town and an area spanning 2.685 miles2 which is where the empty field north of the town would be located. This option is much more of an improvement from the other two, however, the placement of Charlie's town in the area comprising Option #3 would mean that a real-world cemetery would never have been built as the land would be occupied by the rows of council homes we in the film. It should also be stated that the cemetery in question, Gardens of Peace, appears to have opened in 2009, years after the film take place in and decades after the postwar period when the homes in Charlie's town would have been built. And with such a location not affecting anyone who is living, it can easily be argued that the cemetery does not exist in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe. Or perhaps the cemetery is located somewhere else nearby, or perhaps the developers bought up some land from the residents of Charlie's town who are clearly strapped for cash and demolished the homes to build the cemetery after the events of the film. Regardless, Option #3 appears to be a solid choice for the location of Charlie's town, yet we still have one more location to consider.

Option #4: Northwest Havering

And finally, our last option up for consideration is similar to Option #2, a small strip of empty land next to the towns of Collier Row and Harold Hill in the London Borough of Havering. An analysis reveals that if Charlie's town was located here it would span an area of 0.455 miles2 and the field north of the town would span an area of  0.759 miles2. Now, something interesting about this option is that the location of where Charlie's town could be located is where the Risebridge Golf Centre is located in the real world. Much like the case of the Gardens of Peace cemetery, this golf club doesn't seem to have been completed until way after the end of World War II, having opened in 1972, way after the town would have been built. However, this means that the golf club would have been built by the time of the events of the film, even by when Willy Wonka would have had his candy awakening,  which causes a discrepancy as this means the golf club either does not exist in the exact same location in Charlie's town or it doesn't exist in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe at all. With this in mind, if this were the location, it would make sense that the town would have been built here as the land would have been unused throughout the entire reconstruction period the UK underwent after the war, making it a prime location for a housing project.

And so, with this data having been laid out in front of us to analyze, we can now begin narrowing down the options and discover where in Greater London Charlie's town is located. First things first, the fact that Greater London is already so urbanized means that there are very few open fields in the region for a fictional town to be located in, and that can be seen in the fact that there are only four options to choose from. And once we look at the data for each option, it becomes clear that two of these options are not really feasible. Options #1 and #4 do not even have half a square mile to host Charlie's town, and even more important, neither option even have a full square mile of land to be the empty field north of the Bucket home visible during the scene where Willy Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe travel to the Bucket home in the Great Glass Elevator after the tour.

Because of those facts, I can confidently eliminate Options #1 and #4 from the running, and interestingly enough, this actually helps us narrow down the search even more. With Option #1 being eliminated, the London Borough of Waltham Forrest is removed from consideration, leaving only the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Havering in contention (and more interesting, the two remaining options border each other).

Now, seeing as the two remaining options literally border each other, I began to look deeper into the land I designated for Charlie's town and the open field north of the Bucket home in an attempt to narrow down our options down to the place where Charlie's town is located and what I found was rather interesting. Long story short, Option #2 doesn't match the potential that Option #3 offers, with nearly twice the amount of space available for Charlie's town and about 50% more space for the open field to the north than its competitor, Option #2 needs to step aside as Option #3 is clearly the best option for the location of Charlie's town. However, the size of of Option #3 is not what makes it interesting; while I looked into the land I designated for Charlie's town and the empty field north of the Bucket home in Option #3, I noticed that all the land in question was not contained in one borough, let alone one region. Now, this was to be expected as even the name for Option #3 highlighted the fact that this area spanned two different boroughs, the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Havering, however, the northernmost part of the empty field would not even be in the Greater London region in this case, it would actually constitute a part of neighboring County Essex.

And while I kept taking in Option #3, something else about it and Option #2 came into focus in my mind, the fact that both of them border each other. Perhaps I should not be looking at these two options through an either-or lens, but a both-and lens. Therefore, I would like to propose that the location of Burtonville is still mostly in the London Borough of Redbridge, however, the land making up both the town and the empty field north of the Bucket home is a combination of both Option #2 and Option #3.

It should also be stated that this option means that a part of the human settlement where Charlie lives is not in the London Borough of Redbridge, with a part of it, perhaps even the area of the settlement where the Smilex Toothpaste factory is located, being located in the London Borough of Havering. Now, this would mean that the Smilex factory would be located in a different jurisdiction than Burtonville because Burtonville would be a city in the London Borough of Redbridge, so that part of the settlement might have a different name just for being on the other side of an imaginary line made up by man. However, what truly matters here is that Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the Bucket home are located in the London Borough of Redbridge, with some of their neighbors living in the London Borough of Havering and a part of the empty field north of the Bucket home being located in County Essex, outside the boundaries of Greater London.

And so, with all the narrowing down of possible locations we've done so far, I am proud to announce that we have reached the end of our analysis. Charlie's town is located in the London Borough of Redbridge, more specifically the Ward of Hainault, the subdivision of this particular borough that the land designated for the location of Burtonville in our Unity Option provided above is mostly located in.

That’s it for Part 11, click here for Part 12 when we reflect on our findings so far, as well as offer up additional reasons as to why Charlie’s town is located in the London Borough of Redbridge.

But this still does not tell us exactly where in London Charlie's town is located. Therefore, in order for us to do just that, it's going to take us conducting yet another ridiculously hyperfocused analysis of a children's movie in order to get a definite answer that is totally not what the filmmakers had in mind when making the film...but still.

Now, when it comes to narrowing the field down even more, we are going to need to know what direction Charlie's town is facing and in order to do that we are going to need to analyze the position of the sun and the direction shadows are pointing towards.

And yes, this quickly turned into yet another installment marking the transformation of this volume from a fun little post from a fan to a Masters thesis in a university socio-geography program.

After looking through the film, I was able to point out 31 different shadows that we shall be using as the data set for our analysis, and to get to the point sooner, I will reveal to you all right now that 29 of the 31 shadows shown on screen point in the direction of the Bucket home and the unurbanized land that lies beyond it.

Now, when we combine this information with what we know scientifically about what direction shadows point towards in the northern hemisphere during the winter months, we can see that the Bucket home is on the northern edge of town.

As you can see in this screenshot from Shadowmap, a company that maps out in what direction the sun faces and shadows are cast to help companies plan out how they want to lay out their buildings, shadows point northwest during the morning, like at 10 AM, during the winter months in London. The reason for this is being that the sun, for all intents and purposes, is to the south of London, with the Earth's equator in that direction, meaning the sun will be closer to the southern portion of any location rather than the northern portion.

And, as can be seen in this screenshot from Suncalc, a website that allows users to see how long the sun was out on any particular day anywhere in the world, the sun was to the south of London, specifically to the southeast, at 10 AM on Tuesday, February 1st, 2005, the time, day and date of the Golden Ticket winner's tour of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

Now, with the sun to the southeast of London in the morning, this means that shadows will point in the opposite direction, in this case the northwest, which lines up exactly with what we saw on the Shadowmap screenshot. Additionally, as the sun sets in the west, this means that shadows will point towards the northeast in the evening. This will be an important fact to remember as not every scene with a shadow takes place during the morning hours.

And so, without further ado, I present to you yet another ridiculous analysis that in no way actually guided the filmmakers who made this movie:

First off, the shadows of the customers outside Willy Wonka's first store on Cherry Street point towards the northeast, meaning this takes place during the afternoon.

Sidebar #10.1: We know the shadows are pointing towards the northeast because the store is on the corner of Cherry Street and First Street, and since we know that the Bucket's home is located at the end of First Street, with Cherry Street closer to the Bucket home than the Factory, we can assign these shadows such a designation.

The shadows of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory on opening day point towards the northwest, meaning this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the police officers and the news reporters at the opening ceremony of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory point towards the northwest, which fits with the event's previous designation as taking place in the morning.

The shadows of pedestrians and a telephone pole while the other candymakers sell their knock-off candies on Cherry Street point towards the northeast, meaning this takes place during the afternoon.

Sidebar #10.2: Because we have established that Cherry Street is closer to the Bucket home than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and the fact that the shadows point away from Willy Wonka's first store in a perpendicular direction, similar to the direction of First Street, we can assign these shadows with such a designation.

The sun, which is setting while Willy Wonka announces to his employees that he is closing his factory forever after so many cases of corporate espionage rock his business, is setting in the west, meaning this takes place during the afternoon.

The shadows of the ladder leading up to Charlie's bedroom in the attic crawlspace and shelves up against the northern wall of the Bucket home point towards the northeast, meaning this takes place during the afternoon.

Sidebar #10.3: The wall of the Bucket home where their fireplace is built into is closer to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory than the wall in question, meaning this wall is facing the empty field beyond the borders of Burtonville, or in other words, to the north, which is why we can assign these shadows such a designation.

The shadows of the people walking on the sidewalk parallel to Factory Street while Charlie fishes out a used newspaper from the trashcan point towards the northeast, meaning this takes place during the afternoon.

The sun, which is setting while Charlie runs back home with his Golden Ticket, is setting on the east, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.4: There are a few shadows, or in this case sunsets, in the film which do not line up with how shadows and sunsets work. However, this one in particular can be explained away by the fact that the sunset is CGI and obviously the result of negligence from the post-production team and the fact that this whole direction of shadows thing is something we're only discovering a pattern for after the fact.

The shadows of the factory and other buildings while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians wait for the front gates to open at 10 AM point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.5: This is another case of the discrepancy being caused by the fact this scene is clearly CGI and the post-production team had no direction when it came to what direction the shadows should point towards.

The shadow of one of the loading docks at 10 AM points towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.6: This and the following scientifically inaccurate shadows are the result of inaccurate lighting caused by the fact that the cinematography crew were not given the insight into where in the world Charlie's town was located, and thus did not have the proper knowledge to position the lighting in a way to align with how the real world operates.

The shadows of the police barricade blocking the crowd from getting too close to the factory at 10 AM point towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadow of the front gate as it opens at 10 AM points towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the factory corridor entrance building and of one of the loading docks on the factory yard while the gates open at 10 AM point towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of one of the loading docks and of the factory corridor entrance building on the factory yard while the gates open at 10 AM seen from a different angle point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.7: The shadows cast by the various buildings comprising Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory shift from scientifically accurate to scientifically inaccurate a lot during the opening of the gates scene. In fact, the easiest way to see this without having to pause the film is by paying close attention to the last two scenes, which play right after the other in the film, and comparing how the shadows invert.

The shadows of the police barricade blocking the crowd from getting too close to the factory at 10 AM point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

The shadows of the opening gates while the Golden Ticket winners rush inside the factory yard and the the police barricade blocking the crowd from getting too close to the factory at 10 AM point towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the Golden Ticket winners and their guardian as they enter the factory yard and the front gates at 10 AM point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

The shadows of one of the loading docks and of the factory corridor entrance building on the factory yard while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians pass the gates at 10 AM point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

The shadows of the factory corridor entrance building and of one of the loading docks on the factory yard while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians stand in line on the other side of the gate at 10 AM point towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the factory corridor entrance building and of one of the loading docks on the factory yard while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians stand in line on the other side of the gate at 10 AM visible from the ground level point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

The shadows of the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians as they walk towards the entrance to the doors of the factory corridor entrance building at 10 AM point towards the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the front gates and of the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians as the gates close behind them at 10 AM point towards the northeast, which is scientifically inaccurate.

The shadow of the factory corridor entrance building as the front gate finally closes at 10 AM points toward the northwest, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The sun, which is rising while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians approach the doors of the factory corridor entrance building and its rays reflect on the windows of a tower with a smokestack above at 10 AM, is rising from the west, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.8: This is the other example of a discrepancy caused by post-production negligence as this shot of the face of the factory, as well as other details like the rising sun and its rays are clearly CGI.

The shadows of the central buildings of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory as the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians reach the doors of the factory corridor entrance building at 10 AM point north, which is scientifically inaccurate.

Sidebar #10.9: While it appears this example could be evidence that the northern Bucket home hypothesis is incorrect, this and the previous example prove that the sun is behind the factory, meaning that it is to the south of the Bucket home and the empty rural lands beyond the limits of Burtonville. This fact, and the fact that the factory yard is always covered by some sort of shadow indicates that the face of the factory faces north as London is in the northern hemisphere and shadows in the northern hemisphere always point north.

The light reflecting through the windows that run along the eastern wall of the factory corridor entrance building at 10 AM reflects onto the western wall, confirming this takes place during the morning.

The shadows of the rubble from the roof that was damaged by the Great Glass Elevator crashing through and those of Charlie, his parents and Grandpa Joe point towards the southeast, which is not just scientifically inaccurate, but also incompatible with the northern Bucket home hypothesis.

The shadows Grandpa Joe's body and the broom he wields cast as he sweeps the floor of the Bucket home on February 2nd point towards the northwest, meaning this takes place during the morning.

Sidebar #10.10: February 2nd, 2005 fell on a Wednesday, meaning that Charlie should be in school and not at home helping his parents fix the hole in the roof (or at least picking up pieces of what I assume is wood from the front yard).

It makes sense that Charlie would get his parents permission to miss school on Tuesday, February 1st for the tour, but why did let him ditch class on Wednesday, February 2nd? Ultimately, this is just another oversight of the creators of this film who prioritized trying to craft an emotionally impactful scene over the realities of life. That, or perhaps there’s a secret clause in the Golden Tickets that stipulate the kids need to take time off school following their trip to the factory to tend to any injuries accidentally acquired during the tour.

The light reflecting through the window in the Bucket home behind Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina on February 2nd points toward the southeast, which is not just scientifically inaccurate, but also incompatible with the northern Bucket home hypothesis.

The light reflecting through the windows that run along the eastern wall of the factory corridor entrance building during Willy Wonka's therapy session reflects onto the western wall, meaning this takes place during the morning.

And the shadows of the pedestrians, trees, bench, fire hydrant and shoe-shining station while Charlie works as a shoeshiner point towards the north, meaning this takes place during midday.

So, following this utterly ridiculous analysis, we learned that 29 out of 31, or 93.55% of the shadows shown on screen point towards the Bucket home, or in that direction, as opposed to the factory. And because shadows face north in the northern hemisphere where London is, we can then use that information to establish the direction Charlie's town is facing, with the Bucket house on the northern edge of town.

On top of that, a deeper analysis reveals that the shadows pointing in the correct direction, that is to say all confirmed and suspected morning shadows point towards the northwest and all confirmed and suspected evening shadows point towards the northeast, as well as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, account for 18 out of 31, or 58.065%, of all shadows. And so, with nearly every shadow pointing towards the Bucket home and more than half of all shadows pointing toward the direction that shadows during the time the scene is either confirmed to take place during or reasonably assumed to be taking place during should be pointing towards in order to be scientifically accurate, I can say that there is no refuting the fact that the Bucket home is on the northern edge of the Greater London region.

And as for the remaining 41.935% of shadows that do not fit in with the northern Bucket home hypothesis, I will say that we have to take into consideration the fact that much of the film was filmed on soundstages where artificial lighting is used instead of natural light, not to mention the fact that the filmmakers weren't even trying to be consistent with the direction their light source comes from.

Basically, there is no logic to the lighting apart from making the scene look as clear as possible. In fact, this is in part why the only two shadows that don't fit in with the northern Bucket home hypothesis happen in the Bucket home. But this also goes to show how a reliance on special effects and sets filmed on movie studios often result in scenes wrought with scientific inaccuracies. Also, I should also note that I have not yet seen the CinemaSins video on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I assume that this shadow discrepancy wasn't even caught by them.

Now, as to the exact location of Charlie's town, we can use this most recent analysis to narrow down our list of London Burroughs from seven down to four. Because we know the Bucket home is on the northern edge of Greater London, we can eliminate the London Burroughs of Bexley, Bromley and Croydon as their northern regions border the deep urban core of London.

And with this narrowing down, we see that Charlie's town is located somewhere in the northeast quadrant of Greater London, specifically East London, a region infamous for poverty, lower-quality infrastructure than that found in posh central or West London and a working-class population, which just so happens to sound exactly like the kind of place Charlie's town would be located.

Unfortunately, due to how long this post turned out, we will need to split the content of this entry into two parts. Therefore, click here for Part 11 when we continue analyzing the remaining four London boroughs and the content of the film in order to narrow down our options and uncover just where in Northeast Greater London is Charlie’s town located.

While this tells us that Charlie's town is somewhere in Southern England, that is still not enough to place Burtonville in a specific place. However, if we apply what we know about the British media landscape in the real world to what we see in the movie, we can begin to narrow down onto an even more specific location for Charlie's town. Since CNG news vans can easily arrive at the Salt Family Manor in County Buckinghamshire, we can assume that the station's broadcast can be received in the posh Home County, and combining that with the reality of the lackluster state of the entire operation, we can also assume its broadcasting headquarters are nearby. Now, when it comes to media markets, or the areas in which a certain television station can operate, is a bit different in the UK as compared to the US. Therefore, we will need to analyze different television stations in the UK to determine how they divide their local stations, and we will do this by analyzing the three largest stations in the country.

Up first is the one, the only, the legendary British Broadcasting Company. Known the world over, the BBC is easily the most famous British television channel of all time, and is thus the most watched in the UK. With such a vast country to provide television to, the BBC broke down their English-language broadcasts in the UK into a series of regions, with the county of Buckinghamshire being divided amongst:

BBC London in the south

BBC East in the...well, northeast

and BBC South in the northwest (I know, confusing).

Note: The borders of County Buckinghamshire are not shown in these maps, but they will be visible in an upcoming image of Southeast England.

Now, while we do not know where in County Buckinghamshire the Salt Family Manor is located, we do know that the Salt Industrial Park, the location of the warehouse where the Salt's Nuts girls spent days shelling Wonka Bars in order to find Veruca her Golden Ticket, is located in the town of Iver, courtesy of the business card Mr. Salt hands Willy Wonka when the tour group reaches the entrance to the Nut Sorting Room as he boasts to the amazing chocolatier about being in the nut business as well.

Interestingly enough, Iver is home to Pinewood Studios, the film studio where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was filmed. But with regards to our analysis, what you need to know is that it is an exurb of London and located around four miles from London Heathrow Airport, a prime location for say a nut magnate to build an industrial park as it is close to the largest market in the entire UK as well as an international airport to transport their product beyond the immediate vicinity. Now, while it is never stated that the Salt Family Manor is in Iver specifically, it would make sense that the estate would be rather close to Iver as to not cause Mr. Salt, or more likely his chauffer, a long commute to work when he is needed down at Salt Industrial Park.

And now that we know Salt Industrial Park is located in Iver, we can then pull up a satellite map of Southeast England with the border of County Buckinghamshire outlined in black, along with a BLUE dot indicating the location of Iver within it.

Thus, if we use this map, along with also outlining the border of Greater London for reference, and overlay the various maps of the different BBC regions on top of it, we can see that Iver is clearly set, and therefore the location of the Salt Family Manor would most likely be located, within of the region of BBC London.

If we repeat the same process with the second-most popular television channel in the UK, ITV, we see a similar pattern as with the BBC, only this time County Buckinghamshire is divided into three regions:

ITV Anglia in the northeast

ITV London in the south

and ITV Meridian in the Northwest.

And once again, a quick analysis of this map reveals that County Buckinghamshire is still more or less divided into a northern and southern half, with ITV London servicing the southern half, covering the town of Iver and the surrounding rural areas where the Salt Family Manor is most likely located.

And finally, repeating the same process with the third television station in question, Channel 4, was a bit more complicated since the only maps I was able to find on the station's regions were from a document published by a British advertising company.

But after some simple triangulation using the cities mentioned on one of the maps, it was evident that Iver was covered by Channel 4's London Region, while also containing enough of a range to the northwest, comparable to that of BBC London and ITV London, to reach wherever the Salt Family Manor might be located.

Now, seeing as it appears the area of County Buckinghamshire that covers where the Salt family manor is located is dominated by London-based media, that means that CNG is probably a London-based television station as well. Yet, that still is not enough to give Charlie's town a definitive location. We need to look deeper than just what we see on the screen if we want to uncover where Charlie's town is located, we need to study the film's props. One of the most pivotal props the crew created specifically for the film that can help us uncover the location of Charlie’s town was the newspaper Charlie fishes out from the trash and takes home for his dad to announce that Violet Beauregarde from Atlanta, Georgia had found the third Golden Ticket, an issue of the Evening Bulletin.

We actually have images of the various pages of this newspaper available for us online thanks to film prop auctioneers promoting the items they have for sale or collectors sharing their film memorabilia collection with the world, and one of the images shared features what appears to be a map of the region the newspaper covers.

Now, while the map features nothing but fictional locations on it, we gain one important fact from the map that gives us a better insight into the geography of the area of the UK that Charlie hails from. We see that Charlie's town is near the east coast of the UK, and on top of that, there appears to be three bays that dive deep into the land beyond the sea.

Now, these three bays are an important geographical feature when it comes to determining the area where Charlie's town is located because there actually is a place on the UK's east coast that has three bays relatively close to each other, County Essex.

To the east of Greater London, County Essex is known for its suburban commuter towns, although at a relatively more affordable price than the Home Counties in the west which are more upscale and posh, like Buckinghamshire. The southernmost bay actually serves as the county's southern border with its neighbor County Kent, home to Folkestone, the birthplace of David Morris, as well as the hypothesized hometown of Grandpa George Bucket himself. This bay also serves as the mouth of the River Thames, the river that divides London in a northern half and a southern half, as well as having once allowed this northwestern European island nation to develop a mighty navy and dominate the seas. There are two other smaller bodies of water along the coast of County Essex, but the most important one is the southernmost one due in part to its literal connection to the British capital.

However, the similarities between the map included in the Evening Bulletin prop newspaper and County Essex goes beyond them just sharing three bays. In both cases the southernmost bay is the longest, with the central bay being the second longest and the northernmost bay being the shortest. And on top of that, the northernmost bay in both maps actually breaks into two smaller bodies of water that go in opposite directions, kind of like horns, and that is somewhat visible in the case of the northernmost bay on the map from the prop newspaper.

There is another insightful thing about the map in the prop newspaper with regards to trying to connect it to the real world, and that is the placement of a town named Easterbury. Located between the central bay and the northernmost bay well inland, Easterbury is a fictional town created for the map in the prop newspaper.

But such a choice for the name raises questions about what the prop designers had in mind when it came to naming the towns on this map. Seeing as chocolate is a major part of the film, could this be a reference to Cadbury Crème Eggs? Perhaps. Or could the Easter actually refer to an easternly direction? I mention this because in the real world, there is a town a bit north to where Eastebury would be located named Sudbury in County Suffolk, the county north of County Essex.

Additionally, to the north of Sudbury lies another town named Bury St. Edmunds, but that town is a bit irrelevant to this analysis beyond saying that there are other towns with Bury in their name in the region. Furthermore, there is a town named Norbury in the area, but it is actually to the south of Sudbury, being located south of the River Thames in the London Borough of Croydon. Now, while it might seem strange that Norbury, or North Bury, would be to the south of Sudbury, or South Bury, take into consideration that Easterbury, or Eastern Bury, would also be located to the west of Sudbury. Now, I'm not necessarily saying the creators of the prop newspaper did this on purpose, but there is something to be said about these topsy-turvy naming locations. North is south, east is west, up is down; if I may be honest, this illogical naming system fits in pretty well with the illogical worlds of Tim Burton movies.

Now, while County Suffolk is far too north to be within reach of the London-based media, neighboring County Essex is not, and combined with the penetrative waterways whose mouths form on its eastern coast, that makes County Essex a great contender for the location of Charlie's town.

But yet, there is still some more evidence from the film that we need to consider before settling on this rural county as the location of Charlie's town. You see, while I have been referring to the location of Charlie's town as, well, a town all throughout this volume, that's actually a misnomer as the film only ever refers to the settlement as a city, specifically when the narrator describes Dr. Wilbur Wonka as "the city's most famous dentist." All of this means that there must be even more, and even larger, human settlements about than just the few blocks we see whenever a bird's eye view of Burtonville is shown on screen. Now, such an urban description does not seem to fit the mostly rural County Essex. It’s possible that we can rule out the county as the location of Charlie's town, yet we can still use the county as a reference to find the true location.

In order to continue this inquiry, we need to leave the film behind and turn back to the source material for a second, the Roald Dahl novel, because it is there that we get a view into what kind of world Charlie grew up in. Just a few paragraphs into the first chapter, Roald Dahl reveals that Charlie's house sits "on the edge of a great town," something that we actually see adapted into the film as the Bucket home sits on the edge of Burtonville.

Now, if we take a look at the words Roald Dahl used to describe where Charlie lives, a "great town," those words sound pretty similar to a "city," where the place where Charlie lives is described in the film. Perhaps, Roald Dahl meant great as in huge, but perhaps he also meant great as important? But regardless of how he meant it, it is pretty clear that Charlie lives on the edge of a city. And when we consider where CNG would most likely be located and the fact that it is somewhere near County Essex, we have only one viable option for the location of Charlie's town.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I can stand in front of you all today and announce that Charlie, the rest of the Bucket family, Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Factory are all located in none other than...

London!

That’s it for Part 9, click here for Part 10 when we conduct another unnecessarily complex analysis of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in order to uncover just where in the Greater London region Charlie’s town is located in.

Right off the bat, the most prevailing counter point as to why Charlie's town is not located in England is that the town's setting does have a semblance of an "American sensibility" as Tim Burton described, and they are not wrong. There are many things in Charlie's town that are not British at all, but I am here to say that those things do not necessarily disprove that the town is located in the UK. For example, people will point to the nearly 1/3rd of the population who speak with North American Accents in 2005, and even more in decades prior, as evidence that the town is set somewhere else, but deeper research shows that a population of American Britons, while small, does exist in the modern UK. The same can be said about Canadian Britons, which makes sense do to Canada's more extensive connections with the UK, due to them remaining under British control for almost a century after the US declared independence from the UK. Now, most of these American Britons are living in the UK because of their or their family's ties to the military or work in the financial sector. Now, the financial sector does not seem to be a key sector of employment in Charlie's town, even in 1975 when our analysis concluded that half of the town's residents spoke with North American Accents. However, the resident's military connections are never either stated or disproven. And while most American Britons' military ties relate to the modern American military's hegemonic projection of power abroad, an article from the BBC published in 2005, the same year that the film primarily takes place in, reveals that a significant portion of American Britons with military ties are in fact "older, ex-servicemen who returned after being based in Britain during World War II." So perhaps Charlie's town is a settlement that was populated by former American soldiers after the end of World War II who married a British spouse and this later led to greater American immigration to the area, resulting in a unique community where American culture still remains to a degree, not all that different from other immigrant communities in the UK and other countries with significant immigrant populations.

This wave of Anglo-North American immigration would have also transpired at the exact same time as the Postwar period when the UK underwent drastic changes in order to rebuild their society, especially in regards to civilian infrastructure after the Germans had bombed many of their cities during the war. This rebuilding of society running parallel with a unique culture taking root in a certain area could have resulted in public infrastructure having an American aesthetic, most notably in the use of American-style blue mail drop boxes across town. And on a much more personal level, cultural attitudes, such as driving on the right-side of the road, owning a LHD vehicle, and most notably, speaking in Americanisms, such as using Candy instead of the British Sweets would have become a mainstay amongst the residents of the town, even amongst the British members of the community, like the Buckets. Additionally, there are other Americanisms that Charlie uses, such as Band-Aid, that are also used in Australia, which fits in with the fact that we have established that Mr. Bucket was most likely was born and spent his formative years in the land down under, which then explains how Charlie came to use the word instead of the British Plaster. But unfortunately, the local economy would take a downturn in the early 1990s and this was what most likely resulted in the North American Accent speaking community shrinking as they most likely began returning to their home countries in search of more work opportunities, yet that does not mean that their community did not leave their mark on this English town. Almost a decade and a half later, the town still maintains much of its "American sensibilit[ies]," so much so that a child born after the economic downturn can still be stated to not be British by some not familiar with the results of this analysis and the response to the criticisms of this analysis.

Now, the one thing I cannot just explain away is the fact that the currency Charlie uses to buy the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket is not the UK’s Pound Sterling, but rather a fictitious currency modeled after the US dollar. Now, while I can explain away every other argument for why Charlie's town is not in the UK with ease, this one fact, and a major fact nonetheless, would probably stump any other person pondering over where Charlie's town is located. It would probably also lead them to concede the debate to a person arguing that Charlie's town is not in the UK for the currency issue is a very hard thing to explain away…but it’s not impossible to. Bear with me here, because I think I can explain how Charlie was able to use this non-British currency in the UK. The one thing we know about Charlie and the Bucket family is that they are all incredibly poor, they're so poor that Charlie only gets one Wonka Bar every year as a birthday present. Now, the book goes into more detail than the 2005 film, describing Charlie as having an almost unnatural desire for chocolate. He is even said to have stuck his nose up against the windows of the local shops where he would smell the candy from the other side of the barrier and drool because of it. Not to mention he would also watch from a distance while other children would gobble up their chocolate, something that logically used to cause him great pain and almost certainly drive him near crazy.

Now, I'm not here to argue that Charlie actually does have one flaw that makes him not so goodie-goodie, and that being that he is lustful...yet. But, in all seriousness, no child can be as perfect as Highmore Charlie is shown to be, and a lust for candy is by far the least worst vice anyone could have, thus ensuring that we can still view him as the unbelievably-goodie-two-shoes we all fell in love with while also adding some intrigue to his character. All of that is to say that Highmore Charlie probably also used to press his face up against the windows of local stores while other children bought Wonka Bars with their disposable income, and this takes us back to Bill the Shopkeeper's shop. In fact, Charlie is shown to do something similar in the film, standing on the other side of the gates of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory on the afternoon before the Golden Ticket winners’ tour and calmly inhaling the scent the smokestacks released. All the while appearing as relaxed as if he were smelling the smoke of burning incense in a church, because for all intents and purposes, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory is a holy temple for Charlie and all other the devotees of Wonkaism.

As one of the few shops shown in Charlie's town, Bill the Shopkeeper's shop was probably one of the most frequently visited shops where Charlie used to press his face up against the glass, meaning that Bill the Shopkeeper probably knew who Charlie was before he entered his shop that fateful January evening when he discovered Willy Wonka's last Golden Ticket. Not to mention the fact the Buckets were that family that lived in the rundown shack near a dump site at the end of First Street meant that even if Charlie did not press his face up against his shop's glass, there was no way Bill the Shopkeeper could be such a vital member of the community, running a shop in an economically-deprived town and all, and not know about Charlie's existence.

And so, with that said, I want you all to pretend that you are Bill the Shopkeeper for a moment, pretend that you run a little corner store in a town where most people have very little money, and there are even people who have no disposable income at all. And now, imagine that one of those people with no disposable income, a ten-year-old boy who is as thin as a toothpick, so much so that a stranger would later describe him as looking starved to death, enters your shop. Now, you know this kid comes from a family who can barely afford to put food on the table and you can see the living conditions of his family home right up the street from your own shop. Yet, he shows up to your store, although, he shows up with a banknote of a foreign currency in hand. It might even be a currency used in a country that many of your immigrant neighbors hail from that you have a small stash of change of in your cash register, but it's not your country's currency, the UK's Pound Sterling. And now, image that that 10 year-old starving boy takes off his tattered gloves and lifts up that foreign currency banknote up to you with his cold, near-frostbitten fingers and politely asks in a near-squeaky voice if he could please buy a Wonka Bar. He's not asking for a handout, he showed up with money to buy a single, measly chocolate bar like a normal child, which he deep down knows he is not and fears he might never be, and wants to do so legally.

Could you say no to this boy? Could you say no to a boy with this face?

I thought not.

I should also mention that the film clearly shows Bill the Shopkeeper undergoing a mental exercise that might very well be the one you readers just underwent as instead of taking the banknote from Charlie's hand as soon as he placed it out for the store owner to take it, Bill the Shopkeeper instead hesitates to take the banknote. You see him reach out for the banknote but then freeze up when he has a direct view of it, as if to say this isn't a Pound Sterling. But instead of berating this kid whom he knows has no money, Bill the Shopkeeper instead decides to treat him like a human being and allows him to purchase a Wonka Bar.

He puts on a large smile and hands the boy the Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight he politely asked for and even proceeds to give the boy his change from his collection of this foreign currency that he keeps in his register which he one day plans to take to the bank and exchange for UK Pound Sterlings.

Sidebar #8.1: I was able to find decent quality images of both sides of the prop $10 banknote that Charlie found in the snow which he then used to purchase the Wonka Bar with his Golden Ticket inside. I also found a low quality image of the front side of a $5 banknote used when Bill the Shopkeeper hands Charlie his change, but no images of the backside of the $5 banknote nor images of either side of the $1 banknotes Charlie got in change as well. I know I have seen images of these props before as I distinctly remember one of the banknotes with a portrait of one of these famous dead, old white men who helped found the country that the currency is from, as well as a description declaring him the President of the Republic, but I never saved a copy of these images. I am not sure if this is from the $5 banknote or the $1 banknote, but if you have images of either side of either bill, preferably high-quality ones but the best you can provide will be fine, please contact me about sharing these images as I would like to have copies of what these banknotes looked like.

And finally, another argument made against a UK-based Charlie's town related to the issue of money is the fact that all the residents refer to their currency as Dollars. While I am not here to discount the idea that the currency Charlie found is in fact a type of Dollar (Fun fact: it's actually quite common for former British colonies to use Dollars instead of Pounds as their currency, so it is quite probable that the banknote Charlie found on the street is from a former British colony that is not the US), the question still remains why the residents of the town still refer to their currency as Dollars. If Charlie's town is in the UK, why didn't the two adults who tried to buy his Golden Ticket from him at Bill the Shopkeeper's shop not offer him £50 and £500, and instead offered him $50 and $500? This discrepancy however has a simple answer, the residents simply use Dollar as a slang term for their currency, not as the name for their currency. Seeing as we have established there being an American immigrant community in Charlie's town, it makes sense that certain Americanisms would enter the lexicon of the residents, even the British ones, something which has already been proven by the resident's constant use of the word Candy to refer to what Willy Wonka concocts in his factory. It should also be noted that there are real-world examples of people using terms for one country's currency in another country. A prime example of this would be the Canadian Dollar's $1 and $2 coins, which Canadians refer to as loonies and toonies. Now, due to its proximity to the Canadian city of Vancouver, it is quite common for residents of the American city of Seattle to ask their fellow Seattleites for a loonie or a toonie when they are strapped for change at a vending machine, in line at a fast food restaurant or at the checkout counter of a grocery store. If people in Seattle can incorporate monetary slang from the other side of the border into their everyday vocabulary, why wouldn't British people who lived next door to and worked side-by-side with Americans begin using the name of their friend’s native currency, which just so happened to also be the world's most powerful currency, as a slang term for their own currency?

Now, while some may see this entire volume of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar as a desecration of the work Tim Burton and crew did for years, let me clarify that I do not intend to strip Charlie's town of the "American sensibility" they envisioned the town having. I am not here to deny the town its American roots, I fully acknowledge the legacy the American presence has left on the community, resulting in a culture very different from anything we could ever see in the UK the real world. Not just do some people in Charlie's town drive LHD-vehicles and drive on the right side of the road and integrate Americanisms like Candy into their everyday speech, there are even institutions that promote the use of the North American Accent active in the town.

An example of this would be the local news that the Buckets watch to keep them up to date with all the breaking news pertaining to the Golden Ticket winners, which most likely is CNG, the news station that is present for the opening of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, the interview the Salts gave to the press after Veruca claimed the second Golden Ticket and the opening of the gates for the Golden Ticket winner's tour of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. While the station might be a rundown operation with not that much of a reach, it is unique as it’s about the only domestic news outlet to promote the use of the North American Accent amongst its on-air talent. The use of such a plebian accent in the Queen's backyard is an extraordinary feat, especially considering that the British media has historically promoted the BBC Accent over other regional accents, let alone foreign accents, within their domestic media sphere. However, when you have an established American community, it only makes sense that a television station would have sprung up during the height of their communal presence in order to appeal to their unique culture. But eventually the station would cease to be the American station and become a staple of the media diet of nearly all the residents of Charlie's town, thus giving it new life when the American population began to decrease following the economic downturn in the late 20th century, yet never losing its American identity as it still features North American Accent speakers in key news anchor and reporter roles in 2005.

However, it is those nostalgic ties to the past that hinders the station’s necessary transformation into something that can flourish in the present, which is why CNG and their equipment seems to be so out of date when the other news stations and networks use contemporary technology in their reporting. CNG wants to maintain its American sensibility but with less North American Accent speakers around to watch them, they are forced to double down on such sensibilities to keep the audience they do have, which ended up digging them deeper into a hole of irrelevancy that eventually got them to a place where they did not have the capital to fund an upgrade of their operation, thus commending them to use mid-to-late 20th century technology in the 21st century.

But despite my praises of the American sensibilities of Charlie's town, I still have to stick with the conclusion that the town is located in the UK. And while some still might cling on to the idea of a bicultural setting, as Tim Burton described how he envisioned the town, as proof that the town is not in the UK, I will ask those who hold that view this simple question. Why is it that I can more or less easily explain away the American sensibilities but I can't get rid the town of its British sensibilities?

What does that tell you? Let’s run down some of what we have uncovered so far.

The things that are British in Charlie’s town are undeniably British, like the magazines being sold at Bill the Shopkeeper's shop or the Teleton television that the Buckets own. Yet the things that are American, like the mail drop boxes or the currency, are diluted forms of the original that can, at best, only claim to be inspired by the original American items in question. And upon further reflection, I realized the reason for this discrepancy was that all of the American things in Charlie's town seem to be a British person’s idea of what America is like, you know, minus the school shootings and no public healthcare system. This makes sense from the point of view of the out-of-universe explanation as the film was filmed at Pinewood Studios in the UK and thus featured a mostly British crew who helped produce the film. However, with respect to this volume of the series, the in-universe explanation is very simple; Charlie's town is in the UK, but following the rebuilding of the country after the devastation that was World War II, seeing as the rows of homes that cover the town are at least half a century old, the town's American residents must have had enough leeway over the government for them to allow them to rebuild the town as a Little America which reflected the society from which they hailed from.

Sidebar #8.2: This might also explain why the residents of Charlie's town seem to be stuck in the past, with the residents in 1985 and 1990 looking more like they came out of the 1960s or 1970s, and the lack of contemporary technology apart from the lack of capital to fund such renovations.

By culturally staying in the latter-half of the twentieth century, the residents can continue to feel as if their lives are fine despite them living in less-than-thriving economic conditions. By living their lives as if they were still in the most prosperous era before the economic crisis that hit the UK in the 1970s which officially put an end to the era of postwar economic growth, the residents of Charlie's town can continue to have pride in the town's prosperous and glorious past. However, such mass delusion would be unlikely, but when the town exists in a world where a mad candymaker can create gum that tastes like a three-course meal or a flying glass elevator then truly anything is possible.

It was through the leverage of their power and influence that the American residents of Charlie's town could have recreated home in the UK while still not eradicating the local culture from sight. In other words, while Charlie’s town may be significantly more American-influenced than any place outside the fifty states and territories in our real world, the town at its heart is undeniably, quintessentially British. Please, someone inform Queen Victoria and her butler that we found all the British things, they were in Charlie’s town!

That’s it for Part 8, click here for Part 9 when we take a deeper look into the film, props made for the film and the real world to determine just where in the United Kingdom is Charlie’s town located.

However, apart from a tongue-and-cheek address for Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, the handbook offers us another piece of information that is a true bombshell in our investigation. Not that far into the handbook, there is a section dedicated to the various families and groups depicted in the film and of course the first family described in the handbook are the Buckets. The handbook offers a lot of interesting information into Charlie's family, but one thing that stands out is that the Buckets are given an item box with some behind-the-scenes information that none of the other families are given. The information offered is mostly related to the film-making process rather than the story featured in the finished product as the manual was initially created to be a memento for those who worked on the film to reminisce on what it took to craft the finished product. However, once you get to the "NATIONALITIES WITHIN FAMILIY" subcategory in the box, we are given a straight-forward answer to the question of just what nationality the Bucket family members are.

So, there it is, ladies and gentlemen! To quote a familiar film to all of us: It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! The nationality of the members of the Bucket family is none other than ENGLISH!

Now, I cannot understate just how much of an earthshattering revelation this is. Even I have to admit that I was amazed when I was first read through the factory manual and came across this piece of information. For the first time in our investigation we have concrete evidence from an official source that describes Charlie and the rest of the Bucket family as hailing from a real-world location. This is not a hypothesis formed after hyper-analyzing the film and rationalizing a conclusion that is not actually stated, this is a straight-up honest fact.

On top of this reveal, if we go back to the manual and read the text carefully, we can actually get an even deeper insight into just who the Buckets are, believe it or not. It needs to be pointed out that the word used to refer to the family's origins in the manual is Nationalities, not Ethnicities. As to why this distinction is important to clarify, the reason is that the difference could change the implication of these findings.

The difference between nationality and ethnicity is that nationality referrers to one’s citizenship whereas ethnicity refers to one’s ancestry. This lines up with how the UK government views nationality, as its six types of British nationality all refer to citizenship or another similar legal relationship with the UK, rather than one solely based on ancestral ties to the UK. What this means in regards to our analysis is that the manual reveals that Charlie and his family are citizens of England, a misnomer, but we will get to that later on.

While it can be argued that many of the Bucket family members are also ethnically English, seeing as they all speak what we categorized as British Accents back in Exhibit 2, that fact is not all that relevant because it doesn't truly tell us where Charlie and his family are from by itself. While the largest concentration of English people can obviously be found in England, due to British colonialism, ethnically English people can be found on every continent on Earth. Had the Bucket family been referred to as Ethnically English, that could mean that the location of Charlie's town is in some fictional land that just so happens to have a large ethnically English population, as we were initially lead to believe by the filmmakers. But, as every installment of this analysis has been demonstrating, the fact of the matter is that the evidence does not support that conclusion. The evidence we do have tells us that Charlie and the rest of the Buckets are what we will call Nationally English, or citizens of England. Now, as I alluded to before, it should also be said that Nationally English is not a term that holds any legal meaning in the UK, therefore I am instead using it as a colloquial term to describe someone who was born in England, one of the four constituent countries of the UK, or someone who became a naturalized UK citizenship and settled in England.

The nationality over ethnicity clarification also fits in with the conclusion that Grandpa Joe is actually an ethnically Irish immigrant who left his homeland in search of work, because even though he is not ethnically English, Grandpa Joe did become Nationally English later on in life. According to the UK Government, the three main requirements to become a naturalized UK citizen through marriage are being "18 or over," having been "married to, or in a civil partnership with, someone who is a British citizen" and having "lived in the UK for at least 3 years before the date of your application." While Grandpa Joe may be Irish, Grandma Josephine can clearly be categorized as being ethnically English as she speaks in an undeniably posh London accent, which makes sense as her actress, Eileen Essel, is the only actor who played one of Charlie's grandparents who was born in London. This fact, on top of the fact that the manual designates her as being Nationally English, means that her marriage with Grandpa Joe would fulfil the second requirement mentioned before. As for the third requirement, we see in the film that Grandpa Joe has been living in Charlie's town since 1985, and since he and Grandma Josephine are already seniors by that time, on top of the fact that we can confidently designate her as being Nationally English, this means that they would have had to have had Mrs. Bucket decades prior to the earliest moment on the timeline that we first encounter Grandpa Joe in the film as an employee at Willy Wonka's first candy shop on Cherry Street. All of this is to say that Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine have most likely been married for well over two decades by the time of the main events of the film, meaning that Grandpa Joe also fulfils the third requirement set out by the UK government. And as for the first requirement of being at least 18 years old…do I really need to give an argument for why that’s the case?

Additionally, apart from paying a fee to apply for UK citizenship, there are other requirements, such as obtaining "indefinite leave to remain," which one usually obtains after living 5 years in the UK, which is not an obstacle for Grandpa Joe as mentioned before. Grandpa Joe also needs to prove he resided in the UK "exactly 3 years before the day the Home Office receives your application," which we have already shown he qualifies for due to the mere fact he’s been a resident of Charlie’s town since 1985. And he would also need to prove his "knowledge of English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic," which Grandpa Joe clearly does, as well as having "passed the life in the UK test," which considering how knowledgeable Grandpa Joe is about Wily Wonka's chocolate factory he theoretically could pass if he studied for the test beforehand. And finally, a prospective citizen must also "be of good character," which the film shows us he definitely is, unlike that lazy bum, Albertson Grandpa Joe, from the 1971 film.

“Each Grandpa Joe's last line from both movies” - Reddit User FionaWalliceFan

Additionally, the UK government also specifies the rules regarding British citizenship for those children of British citizens born outside of the UK, which would be relevant in the case of Mr. Bucket if we accept that he was born and spent his formal years in Australia. Since Mr. Bucket would have been born before 1983, the UK government says the requirements for him to become a UK citizen as someone born overseas are if his "father is British," and also a "citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies," who is "married to your mother" and "able to pass on his citizenship to you." And if we accept that Grandpa George was from Folkestone on the south-east English coast, which satisfies his ability to pass his citizenship to his children as he too would have been "born or adopted in the UK," and then met Grandma Georgina, whose actress, Liz Smith hails from a town in the North of England, Scunthorpe, in England before the two embarked on a migrant worker's journey that took them to Australia where their son was born, there is nothing in that story to contradict any of the requirements set out by the UK Government for Mr. Bucket to automatically gain UK citizenship and thus become "Nationally English" as well.

That’s it for Part 7, click here for Part 8 when we argue against some arguments that might be levied against the claim that Charlie’s town is in England and that Charlie, the rest of the Buckets and the rest of the residents of the town are British.

Not just is CNG present for the opening of the gates to Wonka's Factory, the network seems to be a staple of the community since the network sent reporters to the factory 15 years earlier to cover the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Wonka's newly-built factory.

With such a storied legacy, one would assume that CNG is a major broadcaster in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe, with news bureaus all over the world ready to report on whatever news breaks anywhere, but yet another analysis of the film reveals that this might not be the case. You see, a big part of the film's method of introducing the four rotten kids to the audience is by starting of their introduction with an outdoor shot of their neighborhood or home. These shots help the audience understand the different walks of life the Golden Ticket winners hail from, but with regards to our inquiry, it also offers us a view of the different news vans stationed outside the homes of the victors, ready to broadcast their interviews with those lucky children to the world once the brats finish speaking. And surprisingly, the CNG news van is only present at one of the four rotten kids' homes, and that rotten kid is none other than Veruca Salt of County Buckinghamshire, England.

Apart from its only appearance outside of Charlie's town being at Veruca's home, the CNG news van and the equipment used by the network back in 1990 looks like it came from the 1970s or earlier. This means that CNG must not be a large enough enterprise to be able to afford more contemporary technology for its operations unlike the other networks who report on the four rotten kids. This is valuable information because it explains why CNG does not report on all of the four rotten kids, because they don't have news bureaus all over the world ready to report on whatever news breaks anywhere else. They are not the BBC or CNN of the Charlie and Chocolate Factory Universe, they are just your run-of-the-mill local news station.

Sidebar #5.1: After conducting an even deeper dive into all of the news networks who reported on the four rotten kids winning their Golden Tickets, I have discovered the CNN of the Charlie and Chocolate Factory Universe, unoriginally named NNN. The NNN news van clearly appears parked on Violet Beauregarde's driveway and one of the journalists interviewing her and Ms. Beauregarde is even holding out a microphone with the NNN logo on it. The logos even look similar with the second leg of the first "N" acting as the first leg of the next "N" and so on.

Something else that stood out the more I thought about it was that the NNN news van and the NNN journalist appears when Violet is being interviewed. Now, the Beauregardes live in Atlanta, which just so happens to be where the CNN headquarters are located in our universe, and so this would explain why NNN is most visible when Violet is being interviewed. However, what truly makes NNN the CNN of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe is that a news van with a similar logo to the one on the news van parked in front of the Beauregarde home in Atlanta can be seen parked outside the Gloop butcher shop in Germany.

In short, the ability for NNN to report from its home in Atlanta all the way across the world in Germany is what makes it the CNN of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe. The network clearly has the resources to be a global news network, unlike CNG, but just to vent, I am kind of upset that they didn't use actual CNN assets when filming the interview scenes. I mean, both CNN and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. were owned by the same company at the time, Warner Media, LLC, so it’s not like there would have had to have been complex deals to have the brand of one company appear in content produced by another company. I mean, sure, Charlie's family is too poor to afford cable or satellite TV, all they have is an analogue TV from the late 20th century that only has one of its two rabbit ear antennas intact after all. But couldn't Charlie have walked by a store, or perhaps a scene with him at school, where someone is playing CNN and Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer pop up and they have to stop their report on the Iraq War or the Insurgency in Afghanistan in order to break the news that really matters: another snot-nosed brat has found another one of Wonka’s Golden Tickets.

Just me? Oh well, back to the analysis.

Perhaps CNG is the television embodiment of Charlie's town. It might have been prosperous decades ago, but now it’s rundown and unable to keep up with the times, destined to only report to a local audience about local news, such as the only memorable event happening in their neck of the woods, their town's most famous industrialist inviting five lucky children to tour his factory...and an interview with a local girl and her parents on how she won her ticket to the tour?

Stay tuned!

That’s it for Part 6, click here for Part 7 when we delve into what is probably the most sought after piece of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film memorabilia and discuss the earthshattering information contained in it. And how that information assists our quest to uncover the true location of Charlie’s town.

One of the ways Charlie and the Buckets stay up to date on the Golden Ticket contest is by watching the news reports of the different winners on their Teleton television set. In line with their socio-economic status, the Bucket's sole television is incredibly small, out of date and beaten up after decades of wear and tear. But as it turns out Teleton is not a made up brand of televisions, like Smilex Toothpaste at which Mr. Bucket toils away at their factory screwing on the caps, but a real-world television brand. Some research on the internet reveals that the history of the Teleton brand begins in 1964 when Teleton Electro Ltd. was registered in the United Kingdom as a company specializing "in the import and distribution of hi-fi products in Europe." However, by 1970, the Japanese electronics giant Mitsubishi acquired half of Teleton Electro Ltd., which had been its official distributor into West Germany up until that point. As part of the acquisition, Teleton Electro Ltd. simplified its name to Teleton and began selling Japanese products under this new name all throughout Europe. Additionally, Mitsubishi claims its acquisition of Teleton Electro Ltd. resulted in them controlling "about 50% of the UK's television market and aims to introduce color" television to the UK as well. In short, it appears that the Bucket's Teleton television is a piece of British history commemorating the country's connection to the Japanese economic miracle of the latter half of the 20th century that saw the Asian nation become a powerhouse in high-tech manufacturing.

The magazines at Bill the Shopkeeper's shop

Of the many items littering Bill the Shopkeeper's shop in order to make it look like any run-of-the-mill corner store in an urban area, all the magazines available for purchase pop out as significant. Since many of the magazines are not focused on by the camera, it is difficult to decipher the identity of all of the magazines available for purchase. Yet, I was able to uncover the names of many of the magazines geared towards those with niche interests, such as gardening, classic cars, trains and other hobbies.

Garden Answers Magazine

This magazine can be found both inside and outside of Bill the Shopkeeper’s shop and after conducting some research into the magazine, I found out that the magazine is published in the UK by Bauer Consumer Media Ltd., but unfortunately I was unable to find a copy of the same issue featured in the film, so I chose one that also featured a catchy tagline based around a type of flower.

Practical Classics

Just like the previous magazine, Practical Classics is another magazine published in the UK by Bauer Consumer Media Ltd., but unlike the other, I was actually able to track down an image of the same issue used in the film. According to my research, it was the October 2004 issue, which lines up with the timeline for when the film was being filmed at Pinewood Studios in the UK.

Rail Magazine

A simple Google search revealed that Rail Magazine is “Britain’s No. 1 Modern Rail Magazine” as the copy I used for the example markets itself as, adding another UK-originating item to our list.

Steam Railway

Once again, we come face to face with another magazine of UK origin being sold in Bill the Shopkeeper's shop. Additionally, following an extensive dive into the history of this magazine, I can confirm that the issue being sold at the time Charlie wins his Golden Ticket is Steam Railway Issue #299 which was published on July 16th, 2004, around the same time as the Practical Classics magazine issue I was able to uncover was released as well.

BirdWatching and Golf World

Once again, UK-based magazines shows up at Bill the Shopkeeper’s shop, with BirdWatching being another publication of Bauer Consumer Media Ltd. and Golf World apparently ceasing physical publication in 2014 following commercial shifts to digital content and marking the magazine as another victim of the death of print media.

Your Horse

And for the final magazine on this list, Your Horse is a, you guessed it, UK magazine which markets itself as “Britain’s best-selling equestrian monthly.” And I was once again able to track down the exact issue on display in the film, with this one being Your Horse Issue # 259, published between July and August 2004, once again lining up with when the previous two magazines I was able to find a copy of online were also published.

The Times Newspaper

And now, before we move on from Bill the Shopkeeper’s shop, I want to go over this final item being sold. The Times is one the UK’s oldest daily newspapers, publishing its first issue in 1785, and is thus a staple in the British media market. The inclusion of a copy of this London-based newspaper stands out since even though the film features many different newspapers, such as the Evening Bulletin, The Morning Chronicle and others, all of those other examples are completely fictional and thus cannot be pinned to a real-world location, unlike The Times.

Now, for a shift in our analysis, let’s move from items at Bill the Shopkeeper’s shop and onto items found elsewhere in town such as:

Mail Drop Boxes in Charlie’s town

In a shift from what we’ve been seeing for the last few examples, the blue oblong-shaped mail drop boxes shown in Charlie’s town are not British at all, but clearly inspired by United States Postal Service Drop Boxes. However, the logo on the drop box is not that of the USPS’ iconic bald eagle, but a generic envelope that appears to be traveling at rapid speed. Additionally, the logo heavily features the color red, which the USPS logo does not, and something more like the UK’s equivalent, the Royal Mail.

$10 Bank Note

When it comes to creating the illusion of a location with “both an American sensibility and a British sensibility” as Tim Burton desired for this film, one of the cleverest ways the crew went about doing this is through the use of fake currency. The $10 bank note that Charlie finds on the corner of First Street that he uses to purchase the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket looks near identical to a US Dollar $10 bill, however on closer inspection it becomes clear that this prop is not an American Dollar as the bank note features a coat of arms on the left side with what appears to be some sort of deer and a lion flanking a shield that is reminiscent of the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom and many coat of arms of previous British colonies. Also, the opposite side features a quote in Latin from the Roman-era Egyptian poet Claudius Claudianus which translates to “Whoever desires is always poor,” something which, let’s face it, is a take on the pursuit of money too clear-eyed to be from an American.

LYPC gumball machine

And finally, the gumball machines that a young Willy Wonka buys gumballs from during his rebellious phase where he indulges in all the candies he could get his hands on is clearly a LYPC brand gumball machine, an American company based out of the Chicago area. However, upon further research, I discovered that the LYPC website states the company started in 1993, well before the filming of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory began in our universe, but nearly two decades after 1975 when the item first chronologically appeared in the film. This is to say that we actually do not know whether the LYPC company in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe is American, British or something else entirely as the history of the LYPC company is not the same in both universes.

That is all for the items being analyzed as part of this inquiry, but before moving on, one final observation should be stated. The items in this list can be classified into two categories; private goods, or items that are or can be one’s property, and public goods, items that are sponsored by the government so that everyone can use them. In short, all of the private goods in Charlie’s town are clearly of British origin, except for the LYPC gumball machine and even then we cannot confirm that the version of the LYPC company that exists in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe isn’t actually British, whereas it is the public goods, like the mail boxes that are American-ish. And by American-ish I mean that while the items are clearly inspired by those found in the United States, they are also slightly different from the original inspiration.

That’s it for Part 5, click here for Part 6 when we analyze the fictional news station that appears the most throughout the film and what the range of its coverage tells us about where Charlie’s town is located.

Now, before we start, I need to clarify how the findings of this analysis will be categorized. In short, there will be four possible sides of the road that a vehicle could be categorized as traveling on or have traveled on to get to where they ended up, the left side, the right side, the center and unknown (that is to say I could not pinpoint which side the car was driving on from the angle the final scene was shot). Vehicles that are parked on the left side of the road will be identified with red circles and those that are driving on the left side of the road will be identified with red rectangles. Vehicles that are parked on the right side of the road will be identified with blue circles and those that are driving on the right side of the road will be identified with blue rectangles. Vehicles that are parked down the center of the road will be identified with purple circles and those that are driving down the center of the road will be identified with purple rectangles. And finally, vehicles that are parked in an unknown position will be identified with black circles and those that are driving in an unknown position will be identified with black rectangles.

I also need to clarify the meaning of two automotive terms to describe the side the steering wheel is located on, Left-Hand Drive (LHD) and Right-Hand Drive (RHD). To prevent confusion when talking about direction, what happens in the real world is that countries which drive on the right side of the road, like the United States, have LHD vehicles, while countries that drive on the left side of the road, like the United Kingdom, have RHD vehicles. This is to ensure that the driver finds themselves near the middle of the road as opposed to the fringes. However, Charlie’s town seems to have a mix of both types of vehicles, as well as the side of the road the residents drive on. But the question that remains, just like with the accents analysis, is whether or not there is a disproportionate representation of either style of driving or the side on which the steering wheel for those vehicles are located on, and if there is, just how disproportionate the representation is.

To start us off, the side of the road on which vehicles in 1975 drive on or drove on to end up parked in the position they are shown to be in (and their LHD/RHD designation, if applicable) include:

Two cars parked on the left side of First Street on Halloween night.

A car driving down the center of the road while passing over the two lines on the street perpendicular to the store with the gumball machines (RHD)

and a car parked on the right side of the street perpendicular to the store with the gumball machines.

A car driving down the center of the road in front of the store with the gumball machines (RHD).

A car driving down the center of the road in front of the taffy shop (RHD)

and a car parked on the left side of the street in front of the taffy shop.

A car driving on the left side of Pickwicket Avenue (RHD).

And a car driving down the center of Pickwicket Avenue (LHD).

Sidebar #3.1: I classified this vehicle as traveling down the center by comparing how much of the side of the vehicle I could see compared to how much of the side of the vehicle in the previous image, which was traveling in the opposite direction, I could see. And because you could still see some of the side of the vehicle on screen, this would imply that the car was farther away from the other end of the street where the camera would have been located during filming, meaning that this vehicle drove down the center.

The side of the road on which vehicles in 1985 drive on or drove on to end up parked in the position they are shown to be in (and their LHD/RHD designation, if applicable) include:

A car driving down the center while passing by Willy Wonka’s first candy shop (RHD)

and a car parked on the right side of First Street next to Willy Wonka’s first candy shop (LHD).

And a car parked on the left side of the other end of the block where Willy Wonka’s first shop is located.

The side of the road on which vehicles in 1990 drive on or drove on to end up parked in the position they are shown to be in (and their LHD/RHD designation, if applicable) include:

A truck parked on the left side of First Street next to the Greystone Café (RHD)

and a CNG news van parked in the center of First Street (RHD).

Sidebar #3.2: The CNG news van is an RHD vehicle, that meaning it probably drove on the left side to get there but later moved into a position more in line with what one would expect from a vehicle which drove on the right side. However, since the CNG news is parked in the center and we did not see it drive into its parked position, it will be categorized as unknown as that is the most honest designation I can give it.

The side of the road on which vehicles in the early 1990s drive on or drove on to end up parked in the position they are shown to be in (and their LHD/RHD designation, if applicable) include:

A car driving down the center of First Street after the end of a shift at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (RHD).

A car driving down the center of Cherry Street while the other candymakers sell their knock-off candies (LHD)

and a car parked on the right side of Cherry Street while the other candymakers sell their knock-off candies.

Three vehicles parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory

A truck parked on the right side of a road perpendicular to one that runs near the center of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory

Two cars parked on the right side of a road perpendicular to roads that run near Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory

A car parked on the left side of a road perpendicular to roads that run near Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory

and a car driving down the center of a road near the center of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory.

A car driving down the center of a road on the far edge of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory

and a car driving down the center of a road near the center of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while he shuts down the factory.

Two cars parked on the left side of First Street when Willy Wonka shuts down his factory

and a car parked in an unknown position on First Street when Willy Wonka shuts down his factory.

And the side of the road on which vehicles in 2005 drive on or drove on to end up parked in the position they are shown to be in (and their LHD/RHD designation, if applicable) include:

Ten Wonka Vans driving down the center of First Street leaving the factory

A car driving down the center of a road a block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car driving down the center of a road leading away from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car driving on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car driving on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Three cars parked in an unknown position on First Street as the Wonka Vans leave Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road four blocks ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A truck parked on the right side of a road a block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road in front of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Four cars parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Two cars parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Two cars parked on the left side of a road a block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road a block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the left side of a road leading away from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

and a car parked on the right side of a road leading away from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

A car driving on the left side of a road three blocks ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

and two cars parked on the left side of a road next to a building three blocks ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

A car driving on the left side of First Street towards the Bucket home (LHD)

Two cars parked on the left side of First Street

A car parked on the right side of First street

and four cars parked in an unknown position on First Street.

Ten motorcycles riding down the center of First Street and the surrounding streets.

A car driving in an unknown position on a road running parallel to Factory Street

A car parked on the left side of a road running parallel to Factory Street

and a car parked on the right side of a road heading towards the edge of town.

A car driving on the right side of Factory Street while Charlie stands outside the gates of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (RHD).

Two cars driving on the right side of Factory Streets while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car driving down the center of a road leading away from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Three cars parked in unknown positions on First street while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Four cars parked in unknown positions in front of homes while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the left side of a road one block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the left side of a road three blocks ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

and one car parked on the left side of a road leading away from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while Charlie leaves Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

A car driving on the right side of Factory Street while Charlie finds the money he will use to buy the Wonka Bar with his Golden Ticket inside (RHD).

A car driving on the left side of First Street while Charlie runs home with his Golden Ticket

A car driving in an unknown position on a road next to the Bucket’s home while Charlie runs home with his Golden Ticket

A car parked on the right side of First Street while Charlie runs home with his Golden Ticket

and a car parked in an unknown position on First Street while Charlie runs home with his Golden Ticket.

A car parked on the right side of Factory street during the morning of February 1st

A truck parked on the right side of Factory street during the morning of February 1st

A car parked on the left side of Factory street during the morning of February 1st

A news van parked on the right side of First Street during the morning of February 1st

A news van parked on the left side of First Street during the morning of February 1st

A news van parked in the center of First Street during the morning of February 1st

A car parked on the right side of a road on one far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

A car parked on the left side of a road on one far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

Three cars parked on the right side of a road on the other far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

and one car parked on the left side of a road on the other far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st.

A car parked on the right side of Factory Street during the morning of February 1st

Two cars parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

A car parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

Two cars parked on the left side of a road in front of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st

and a car parked on the right side of a road in front of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the morning of February 1st.

A CNG news van parked in an unknown position on Factory Street during the morning of February 1st.

A van parked on the left side of Factory Street during the morning of February 1st.

A van parked on the right side of Factory Street during the afternoon of February 1st

and a truck parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the afternoon of February 1st.

Four cars parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the afternoon of February 1st

and a car parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory during the afternoon of February 1st.

A car parked on the left side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians leave the factory

and a car parked on the right side of a road one block ahead of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while the Golden Ticket winners and their guardians leave the factory.

Two cars driving down the center of First Street as Charlie returns to his home in the Great Glass elevator

A car driving on the left side of First Street

A car driving on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A truck parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A truck parked on the right side of a road on the other far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road on the other far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the left side of a road on the other far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Three cars parked in an unknown position on First Street

Three cars parked on the right side of First Street

A car parked on the left side of First Street

A car parked on the left side of a road three blocks ahead of the Bucket home

A truck parked on the right of a road two blocks ahead of the Bucket home

A truck parked on the left side of a road two blocks ahead of the Bucket home

A car parked on the left side of a road perpendicular to the road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A car parked on the right side of a road parallel to the road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

A truck parked on the right side of a road parallel to the road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

and a car parked in an unknown position on a road parallel to the road on the far edge of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

A car driving in an unknown position on a road next to the Bucket’s home as the Buckets repair their home (RHD).

And a car driving down the center of First Street while Charlie and Willy Wonka board the Great Glass Elevator (RHD).

And so, much like the analysis of accents spoken in Charlie’s town, the analysis of on which side of the road do the vehicles in the town drive on revealed some interesting information after conducting a deep dive into the data. This time, I have not made the error of sorting every vehicle in the film into one pile, instead I segregated the data into the five different eras the film covers. But this revealed that no other era besides 2005 contained enough data to make any definitive conclusions, therefore I will be focusing on the most detailed era in order to present to all of you the best analysis available. And so, after analyzing 130 vehicles from the scenes of the film that took place in 2005, it can be confirmed that 41, or 31.54%, of the vehicles drive or drove on the left side of the road, 39, or 30%, of the vehicles drive or drove on the right side of the road, 27, or 20.77%, of the vehicles drive or drove down the center of the road, and 23, or 17.69%, of the vehicles drive or drove in an unknown position.

Now, at face value, such data seems to provide no insight into the nature of Charlie’s town as every faction seems to be so nearly evenly divided for any patter to emerge. And unfortunately, a further analysis of the LHD/RHD data turned up inconclusive results due to the small sample size of only 5 vehicles receiving a LHD/RHD designation in this era. However, and with the forewarning that this data originates from a different era, the data from 1975 can deliver some insight into just whom the drivers who drove down the center of the roads were. While only 9 vehicles were categorized in the analysis from this era, 5 of them received a LHD/RHD designation, of which the four RHD-designated vehicles drove down the center or on the left, as was to be expected, whereas the one LHD-designated vehicle drove down the center as well. While this data set is too incredibly small to make any definitive conclusions, it offers us the best insight into the nature of center-driving residents that we have.

In short, with residents not all driving in a uniform fashion, it makes sense that a group of townsfolk would have at some point before 1975 agreed to drive in the center of the road in hopes of bridging the gap between those who drove on the left and those who drove on the right. They obviously have modeled this behavior to some degree of success as by 2005 over a fifth of all drivers in the town drove in such a fashion. But just who were these consensus drivers? If we look at the data from 1975, we see that 80% of drivers who drive in the center of the road drive RHD-designated vehicles, whereas 20% of center drivers drive LHD-designated vehicles. If we apply this 80-20 rule to the 20.77% of drivers who drove down the center in 2005, with the presupposition that all drivers who drove on the left drove RHD-designated vehicles and all drivers who drove LHD-designated vehicles drove on the right side, which in the interest of full disclosure is not the case (there are 3 vehicles in 2005 which appear to violate this rule), the results that we receive are the following:

After crunching the numbers using the previously stated rule, the results show that 48.16% of vehicles might be RHD-designated whereas only 34.15% of vehicles might be LHD-designated, with the remaining 17.69% being those parked in an unknown position. Now, in order to sort these unknown position vehicles, we need to come up with a rule to divide this percentage as well, and the best way we can do that is to repeat the process we used with the 80-20 rule and come up with an admittedly flawed formula, yet the best formula we can come up with. Of we apply the 80-20 rule to the 27 vehicles designated as having driven down the center of the road, we see that 21.6 of these vehicles could have perhaps been RHD designated-vehicles, while 5.4 could have perhaps been LHD-designated vehicles. And once we add these numbers to the data set of 80 vehicles from 2005 that we do know did drive or drove on either the left or right side of the road, we see that 62.6 of these vehicles could have perhaps been RHD designated-vehicles, while 44.4 of these vehicles could have perhaps been LHD-designated vehicles. If we then take these numbers and fund out how much of a percentage they are of 107, the total number of vehicles we have given theoretical LHD/RHD designations to up to this point, we see that 58.50% of them could be RHD designated-vehicles, whereas the other 41.50% could be LHD-designated vehicles.

And finally, we have a rule we can apply to the unknown position vehicles, the 58.50-41.50 rule. And so, when we apply this rule to the 23 unknown position vehicles from 2005, we see that 13.45 of the vehicles could be RHD designated-vehicles and 9.55 of the vehicles could be LHD-designated vehicles. If we then add these results to those of the LHD/RHD designation breakdown for the 107 vehicles we just did, we discover that 76.05 of the vehicles could be RHD designated-vehicles while 53.95 of the vehicles could be LHD-designated vehicles. And finally, when we divide these results with the total number of vehicles identified in 2005, 130, we discover that 58.5% of the vehicles could be RHD designated-vehicles and 41.5% of the vehicles could be LHD-designated vehicles. Now, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt as they come from miniscule data sets and imperfect formulas, however, our best guess once again gives the upper hand to the British Isles rather than Anglo-North America for the British-style RHD-designated vehicles beat Anglo-North-American-style LHD-designated vehicles by a 17 percentage point difference. It additionally should be said that the results of this final analysis, while not a perfect match, are somewhat close to the results of our analysis of the accents spoken in Charlie’s town, with 70.6% of residents speaking with British Accents and 58.5% most likely driving British-style RHD-designated vehicles. Whereas 29.4% of residents spoke in North American Accents, 30% of vehicles drove or were driven on the right side of the road and 41.5% most likely drove Anglo-North-American-style LHD-designated vehicles. So, while this data should not be taken as completely definitive, it is our best window into the world of Charlie’s town and the data from this second analysis indicates a town that is significantly much more British than Anglo-North American.

That’s it for Part 4, click here for Part 5 when we analyze various background items used to decorate the sets of the film and use what we know about their real-world national origins to paint a picture of where Charlie’s town is located.

Bear with me here, my theory of the case goes that at some point in the 2040s, Doctor Winter grows tired of giving prostate exams and having to check if a patient’s particular bodily fluid should be that color and one day just says eff this and begins to regret forgoing acting to become a doctor. Her midlife crisis drives her to purchase one of the new Tesla Time Machine that Elon Musk just released, you know, right after he finished reducing Twitter to nothing but ashes for the seventh time just that month, and she time travels back to 2004 where she manages to sneak back onto the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Pinewood Studios in order to relive her glory days as an actor. It is then that one of the crewmembers confuses her for one of the extras needed for an upcoming scene, the one where Charlie finds his Golden Ticket and gets harassed by adults into selling it to them. While this might have been the moment where others might have cracked under pressure for getting caught and admitted to being an imposter, Doctor Winter, always quick on her feet, quickly unpacked her acting skills she kept stored away in the corner of her mind since she was a teenager and quickly commits to her new role with pride. Even going so far as to play the role with a North American Accent, while also not doing the totally smug European thing where their North American Accent is just an impersonation of a Texan or a southern hillbilly, but instead made her character sound like a normal person one might find somewhere in Anglo-North America.

She of course plays her part well, overwhelming poor little Charlie into staying frozen in between two vultures until Bill the Shopkeeper has to shame the adults and tell the lucky winner to run straight home with his prize and is praised by her fellow scene members as soon as the camera stops rolling. Now, while this praise was a great change of pace from the thankless infected scab treatment and other duties a doctor must attend to, acting did not offer Doctor Winter the sense of purpose that she hoped to find once again. But that was until she looked off to the corner and spotted a young girl practicing her lines yet struggling to remember them. And so she approached the young girl in order to help her and in the spirit of an afterschool special, it turns out young girl was her eleven-year-old self. It all came back to her now, performing on screen for the first time as stressful for her, but Doctor Winter bucked up and imparted some cliché wisdom about perseverance onto her younger self. It was only until she saw the confidence in her younger as she quickly scurried off to the stylist's trailers so that they could doll her up to play the little brute that Doctor Winter remembered why she became a doctor, her true calling is to help people. And with that sense of purpose restored, Doctor Winter returns to the 2040s where she can continue to offer the good people of Sweden some of that good, old-fashioned socialist healthcare.

Well...that's enough shitposting for one day.

But in all seriousness, I believe I speak for the entire CATCF fandom when I wish Dr. Julia Winter a Happy Thirtieth Birthday!

Happy.

Thirtieth.

Birthday.

Veruca Salt is thirty years old. (P.S.: Veruca Salt is actually 28 because her character is nine years old in the film. But still!)

I don't know how I feel about this. Is this what it's like to feel old?

That’s it for the first installment of Unwrapping the Wonka Bar: The Leftovers. Join us next time we post a quick little insight into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also, make sure to check out the original Unwrapping the Wonka Bar series and follow us to keep up to date for when we post updates and other content.

Also, if you have better quality images of the scenes from the film I included in this post, feel free to share them with me so that I may replace the ones I used to improve the experience for the reader.

Sidebar #2.1: Mr. Bucket’s actor, Noah Taylor, is Australian and fakes a British Accent throughout most of the film, but you can hear his normal Australian accent, which is a bit more high-pitched and melodious, during his first line of dialogue in the film when he says “Evening Buckets.” As to an in-universe explanation for this literal slip-of-the-tongue, Mr. Bucket’s father, Grandpa George, was played by actor David Morris who hailed from Folkestone, England, a coastal town in County Kent, meaning that sea-faring industries were a major component of the town’s economy. Since Grandpa George speaks in the working class southern English accent of his actor, perhaps he too has roots in Folkestone and he worked on a boat when he was younger, and instead of leaving Grandma Georgina behind he took her on the boat too. This means that the two would have ended up wherever the boat docked, which very well could have been Australia. Perhaps then Mr. Bucket could have been born in Australia and his family could have spent the earliest years of his life there because Grandpa George found work there, meaning Mr. Bucket would have interacted with many Australian children and thus learned to speak like them. However, Grandpa George would then lose his job in Australia and this would force him to move his family back to Folkestone, the town where his journey to Australia would have begun years prior. And while Mr. Bucket would have then grown up around people who spoke with British Accents, and thus would also being to speak like them on a regular basis, the Australian accent he picked up during his formative years would never be truly erased from his speech pattern and so sometimes he would speak in such a manner, such as when he greeted the family after returning home from a long day at work in order to provide for his family as his father did before him.

Sidebar #2.2: Similar to Mr. Bucket, another member of the family, Grandpa Joe, is played by a non-English actor, in this case Irish actor David Kelly. Charlie’s favorite grandparent speaks in a mostly English accent, but one can still hear the influence of his normal Irish accent when comparing Grandpa Joe’s dialogue to that of David Kelly speaking in interviews, speeches or his dialogue from other roles where he did not have to fake an accent. The easiest explanation for this is that, just like Mr. Bucket who we say was not born in England, Grandpa Joe was born in Ireland to an Irish family and at some point left Ireland in search of work. Now, this forced him to adopt a much more English-sounding accent in order to assimilate into a society which was notoriously fraught with anti-Irish sentiment, at least amongst the British Accent speaking population, at the time due to the backlash against efforts by Irish Nationalists to unify the island of Ireland and free it from British rule. However, the love and pride he felt for his homeland prevented him from outright purging his original accent from his speech and so he did not entirely loose his natural accent as well.

The two dog-walking men.

The middle-aged blonde lady in the corner store where Charlie purchases the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket whom the film credits refer to as “Customer in Shop.”

The owner of the corner store where Charlie purchases the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket whom I have come to the conclusion we all call “Bill,” but the film credits refer to as “The Shopkeeper.”

Sidebar #2.3: The actor who plays Bill the Shopkeeper, Oscar James, is from Trinidad and Tobago, however the island nation was a Crown Colony of the United Kingdom until 1962, around the time Oscar James was twenty. Therefore, Oscar James portrays Bill the Shopkeeper as speaking an accent that is a fusion between an English and a Trinidadian accent, much like Grandpa Joe does with his Irish-English fusion accent. And like Mr. Bucket with Noah Taylor’s natural Australian accent, you can hear Bill the Shopkeeper’s Trinidadian accent when he gets exited, in his case after Charlie discovers he won the last Golden Ticket and he giddily adds “In my shop, too!” Now, with respect to Bill the Shopkeeper, according to an article from The National Archives, the official archive and publisher for the UK Government, England and Wales, titled “Bound for Britain-Experiences of immigration to the UK,” from 1947 to 1970 nearly half a million people left Trinidad and Tobago and other island colonies in the British West Indies for the UK in search of a better life following the rebuilding of the UK in the post-World War II period. It would make sense that Bill the Shopkeeper would have been an immigrant like these too, with him leaving Trinidad and Tobago in his late teens or early twenties in search of a better-paying job elsewhere. But because immigrants from rural countries rarely have the skillset necessary for the highest-paying jobs, Bill would have most likely been relegated to the lowest-level jobs, like sales representative. But after years of barely earning enough to get by, Bill’s hard work eventually pay off and he would become the shopkeeper of his own corner store, where he now serves the community of Charlie’s town and now lives the life that all immigrants dream to achieve. And thus, because he would have immigrated as an adult, unlike Mr. Bucket, he would have spoken with a Trinidadian accent throughout his formative years. But due to the mere chance he was born an immigrant, Bill the Shopkeeper, just like the Irish Grandpa Joe, would have found it useful to mimic an English accent when speaking to people in the broader society as it would have, albeit only slightly more considering his Afro-Caribbean roots, helped him advance in the xenophobic, Anglo-centric society of twentieth century Charlie’s town. This repression of his natural accent is what would eventually lead him to find success as a small businessowner, yet when he finds himself in a scenario where his humanity must show itself, his natural accent takes over, such as when he is elated to discover that a local boy found Willy Wonka’s last Golden Ticket in his shop of all places.

The bald man who offers Charlie $50 and a new bicycle for the Golden Ticket at the corner store where Charlie purchases the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket whom the film credits refer to as “Tall Man.”

The lady at 103 Pickwicket Avenue handing out Halloween candy whom the film credits refer to as “Jolly Woman.”

And last, but not least, Dr. Wilbur Wonka.

And when it comes to the residents of Charlie’s town who speak in a North American Accent, these residents include:

The one and only, Willy Wonka.

The news reporter standing outside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory reporting on the announcement of the Golden Ticket contest, whom the film credits refer to as “TV Reporter.”

Sidebar #2.4:  We do not know if this reporter is a resident of Charlie’s town or if he is just an American or Canadian journalist working for a news network from one of those countries that happens to be stationed at the bureau office for Charlie’s town and reporting on the biggest story developing overseas for his audience back home. Either option is acceptable, but I will say that he is a resident for reasons that will become relevant later on.

The reporter who speaks after the report on Augustus Gloop finding his Golden Ticket and breaks the news to his viewers that Mike Teavee found his Golden Ticket.

The reporter who speaks after the report on Mike Teavee finding his Golden Ticket.

The middle-aged woman who offers Charlie $500 for the Golden Ticket at the corner store where Charlie purchases the Wonka Bar containing his Golden Ticket whom the film credits refer to as “Woman in Shop.”

Ruthie, Veronica and Terrance (Whom shall be referred to as “Willy Wonka’s friends” collectively).

And the security guard at the Flags of the World exhibit whom the film credits refer to as “Museum Guard.”

Now, when we tally up the results of our analysis, we see that out of the 23 residents who speak on screen, there are a total of 14 people, or 60.9% of the sample, who speak with British Accents and 9 people, or 39.1% of the sample, who speak with North American Accents in Charlie’s town. Now, while this seems to be a perfect balance between Tim Burton’s vision of an unspecified Anglo-American fusion setting, while also being significantly more British than it is American, and thus more in line with Roald Dahl’s vision, a deeper look into the data reveals an interesting trend. While the data gathered for this analysis comes from one physical location, Charlie’s town, the data spans three decades, that is to say the residents with speaking roles are residents of Charlie’s town in both 2005 and 1975. With such a wide time gap between the sources for our data, it only makes sense to divide these two eras into different data sets for a more accurate picture.

And so, when we break down our list of characters, we see that the residents of Charlie’s town who spoke with British Accents in 1975 include:

“Jolly Woman” and Dr. Wilbur Wonka. I however will be including Bill the Shopkeeper, Grandpa Joe, Grandma Josephine, the then one-day-to-be Mrs. Bucket and one adult who will serve as one of Willy Wonka’s friend’s parent in the total.

Sidebar #2.6: I included these extra characters whom we do not see in Willy Wonka’s flashbacks in the count in order to boost up the numbers since we need more data to paint a more accurate picture of the demographics of Charlie’s town. However, instead of just making data up out of thin air, I argue that it makes logical sense that these characters would be living in the town during this time for the following reasons. I included Bill the Shopkeeper as he is clearly an immigrant in this non-Caribbean land due to the fact that he speaks with an accent distinct from the various British or North American accents spoken by the town’s residents. Not to mention the fact that he would have been in his early-thirties in 1975, meaning he would have been a bit older than the mostly young people who would have left their home island in search of economic opportunities in that year. So, it would only make sense to place Bill the Shopkeeper’s date of immigration about a decade earlier, thus becoming an established resident of Charlie’s town before 1975. Now, when it comes to Grandpa Joe and his family, I included half of Charlie’s family on this list because we do not know if Charlie’s family has been living in this town for a long time, or at least since 1975. Therefore, I divided the family in half, designating three of them as residents of the town for decades while keeping the other three as later economic migrants. As to why I chose Grandpa Joe’s family instead of choosing the Bucket family pre-Charlie, I made this decision since the best insight we have into how many members of Charlie’s family have lived in this town for multiple years is that we know Grandpa Joe’s family has lived in the town since at least 1985 when he worked at Willy Wonka’s first candy store on Cherry Street. We also do not see Grandpa George or Grandma Georgina during the opening ceremony for Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory in 1990, perhaps because they had no connection to the factory and chose not to attend but are still residents, or perhaps because they did not live in the town and thus could not attend. This makes sense when you consider the previous assumption of the Bucket family pre-Charlie which involves Grandpa George moving the family about in his search for work, only for him to end up in Charlie’s town where he found work before he got too old to work and ended up bedridden for over a decade. And as for the adult who stands in for one of Willy Wonka’s friend’s parents, it only makes sense that at least one of Ruthie, Veronica or Terrance’s parents would speak with a British Accent, thus coming from a mixed family just like Willy Wonka surely came from as well, with him sounding more like his mother whom does not appear in the film as she appears to have passed away by October 1975 since his father speaks with a British Accent and he does not.

On the other hand, the residents of Charlie’s town who spoke with North American Accents in 1975 include:

Willy Wonka, Ruthie, Veronica, Terrance and the “Museum Guard.” I will also be including three adults who will serve as Willy Wonka’s friend’s parents in the total.

Sidebar #2.7: I used a similar logic for the inclusion of these three adults who do not appear in the film in my calculations as I did for the adult in the British Accent section. Willy Wonka’s friends are clearly American, with them celebrating Halloween by engaging in trick-or-treating, an American tradition, across the neighborhood, and so it makes sense that at least three of the four parents speak with a North American Accent as well. And while there are three friends, therefore there would be six parents in total if neither of them are related, because we are not given any additional information as to whom the friends are, it would not be wrong to assume that perhaps two of the friends are siblings, therefore the friends would only have four parents.

Now, when we total up the results of our second analysis, we see that out of the 15 residents who speak on screen and are theorized to have existed, there are a total of 7 people, or 46.7% of the sample, who speak with British Accents and 8 people, or 53.3% of the sample, who speak with North American Accents in Charlie’s town in 1975. And while this is not an apples-to-apples comparison with the first analysis due to the inclusion of theorized parents for Willy Wonka’s friends, we can see that while residents with North American Accents now make up a majority in Charlie’s town, the demographics of the town are still near-evenly divided in 1975.

On the other hand, when we repeat this analysis for a third time, we see that the residents of Charlie’s town who spoke with British Accents in 2005 include:

All seven members of the Bucket Family, the two dog-walking men, the “Customer in Shop,” Bill the Shopkeeper, and the “Tall Man.”

On the other hand, the residents of Charlie’s town who spoke with North American Accents in 2005 include:

Willy Wonka, the “TV Reporter”, the reporter who speaks after the report on Augustus Gloop finding his Golden Ticket and breaks the news to his viewers that Mike Teavee found his Golden Ticket, the reporter who speaks after the report on Mike Teavee finding his Golden Ticket and the “Woman in Shop.”

Sidebar #2.8: The reason I did not include Willy Wonka’s friends in the total for residents with North American Accents in 2005 is because we do not see them as adults all throughout the film, and while some of you might disagree with this reasoning after I just invented parents for these friends and included them in my totals, my reasoning for this choice is as follows. While Willy Wonka is shown to be a hermit loner throughout most of the film, we know that he had friends at one point in his life, so the idea that those friends he had as a kid do not play a role in his life when he is a successful adult (at least when it comes to business) is as strange as the amazing chocolatier is. Therefore, I propose that Willy Wonka’s friends are still a part of his life, however they have long since moved out of Charlie’s town. The best theory I could come up with is that since they are the only people Willy Wonka trusts, they work for their friend as liaisons between the insular world of the factory, where Willy Wonka can be who he is, and the real world, which is cold, unforgiving and unaccepting of their friend’s genius. This way, the friends can still be a part of his life, but this explains why we never see any of them as adults throughout the film, because they are off somewhere else managing Wonka Worldwide, Inc.’s business relations for their shut-in friend.

And so, when we total up the results of our third analysis, we see that out of the 17 residents who speak on screen, there are a total of 12 people, or 70.6% of the sample, who speak with British Accents and 5 people, or 29.4% of the sample, who speak with North American Accents in Charlie’s town in 2005.

Now, the results of this more in-depth analysis demonstrate why it is important to hyper-analyze the accents of the residents of Charlie’s town. While an overall analysis would show a mostly-British, but still mixed, population, we can now see that that analysis is very misleading when it comes to describing the setting for the majority of the film that does not take place inside the factory. Over the course of three decades, Charlie’s town sees a demographic shift where the population of British Accent speakers goes from 46.7% to 70.6% and the population of North American Accent speakers goes from 53.3% to 29.4%. This 23.9 percentage point difference means that Charlie’s town either experienced a 51.18% increase in the British Accent speaking population or a 44.84% decrease in the North American Accent speaking population from when Willy Wonka was a kid to when Charlie was a kid. And while an analysis of the accents spoken in the town do not tell us which option is the case, it is nevertheless an important piece of evidence that will help us uncover the location of Charlie’s town.

That’s it for Part 3, click here for Part 4 when we analyze the driving system of Charlie’s town and how the data from that analysis relates to the date from this one.

Now, why would it matter if the books Burton and August read from were American-published copies, shouldn’t the material all be the same since Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in English? You would think so, but to better appeal to the local culture, especially when it comes to material aimed primarily at children, it is quite common for publishers to amend the original works they publish to reflect the dialects spoken in their markets. The result of this practice means that books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory underwent minor, but in some ways major, changes in the form of diction when it came to publishing the book outside the United Kingdom. In order so that Americans, primarily American children, can both better relate to the characters and in some cases simply follow the plot, American publishers have amended Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s British terminology and replaced them with common American phrases.

The most obvious example of this change comes in the form of the term “lift” being changed to “elevator” in American publications of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As you can see, the term “lift” is used to describe the Great Glass Elevator, with even the name of Willy Wonka’s contraption having originally been the “Great Glass Lift” only to get turned into the “Great Glass Elevator” in the American edition.

This simple process of changing certain words but keeping the rest of the text intact is evidently clear by comparing how literally similar, but culturally different, the two previous images of text are, but it is also far from the last example of such a change. Another significant change made for the American publication was the value and, more importantly, the name of the currency Charlie finds on the street that he then uses to purchase the Wonka Bar with his Golden Ticket inside.

In the original British version, Charlie finds “fifty-pence” while outside.

Whereas in the American edition, our Lucky Boy finds himself a whole “dollar” that he quickly spends at a local store, and the rest is history.

Now, both versions cannot be canonically correct, so when in doubt its best to rely on the oldest version to best grasp the message the author hoped to convey. And since the author was a British man writing to a British audience, the logical answer is to say that the original British edition is what Roald Dahl had in mind when it came to describing the town that Charlie and the rest of the residents inhabit. And so, with all of this said, it is quite clear that Roald Dahl’s vision when it came to Charlie’s town was not that it was a location with “an American sensibility and a British sensibility,” and so we have no choice to say but that Tim Burton did not truly understand the work he was trying to adapt for the big screen, and so this misunderstanding helps explain why Charlie’s town is such a confusing location. But even though we disproved Burton’s thesis for the location of Charlie’s town, that does not mean that we now have a location for the town, and for that we will need to continue our analysis of the film.

But when it comes to such a storied legacy, it only makes sense that fans of this film might have many questions about the story rattling around in their minds, but with such a long time between when the film first premiered to the present, have no one to offer up a thoughtful response. Well, if this sounds like you, it is my pleasure to announce today, February 1st, the same day in which Charlie Bucket and the rest of the Golden Ticket winners set foot inside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, the first installment of a new series which asks the questions Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fans have asked for over a decade and a half and offers up a response backed with unbelievably detailed amounts of analysis that no children’s movie should ever lead to; Unwrapping the Wonka Bar. To all who come across this post, we here at Real-LCA­-blog hope to provide an entertaining, inviting, interactive and sometimes overly obsessive experience for all Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fans and we hope you join us and enjoy the ride! Perhaps we’ll change how you view our beloved film or perhaps you’ll entirely disagree with our assessment, either way we’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to respond to our posts and leave your thoughts in the comments. And so, without further ado, I present to you all, the first installment in our series:

Where is Charlie’s Town Located? Part 1

One of the biggest questions fans of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have been wrestling with since 2005 has been where in the world does Charlie live? Where is Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory located? Every other location in the film is literally spelled out for the audience, with a subtitle of the location accompanied with a sound effect of the text being digitally generated showing up whenever we are introduced to a location not Charlie’s town or the final location of Dr. Wilbur Wonka’s home. Now, to obsessive movie detail fans, this might seem like a glaring plot hole the creators left unanswered, but if you do what obsessive movie detail fans do best and overanalyze every piece of media related to the film in question, you will uncover that this was by design.

According to the behind-the-scenes extra Designer Chocolate, included on the physical media release of the film, the Director, Tim Burton says of the location of Charlie’s town:

“It’s descriptive, but then it still allows you to interpret it. I always thought that that was quite interesting and that was something that we’d try to retain. We just sort of set it in its own city and not really describe where it really is.”

And on top of not giving the audience a real-world location of Charlie’s town, Burton then goes on to imply that the film takes place in a fictional country, stating:

“It has both an American sensibility and a British sensibility. It’s interesting cause you don’t really know where it takes place, and that gives it it’s kind of fable-like quality.”

Well, there you have it folks, the short and easy answer to this question seems to be that Charlie’s town is set in a fictional location that fans could not one-day travel to in the real world.

But, let’s be honest now, where’s the fun in saying that? What kind of inaugural Unwrapping the Wonka Bar post would this be if the answer was revealed in less than 500 words? That sets a terrible precedent and it does not accurately represent what this series is about. We here at Real-LCA­-blog take too much pride in our obsessive breakdown and analysis of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to leave you wonderful readers feeling so unfulfilled. But what else is there to say, the director himself told us that Charlie’s town is not supposed to be a real place…but is that accurate?

Well, yes, Burton told us the town is completely made-up, “fable-like” were his exact words. Yet, if you extend that action, analyzing his exact words some more, a glimmer of hope for a much more interesting answer begins to manifest. When he spoke about translating what the original book has to say about Charlie’s town, Tim Burton said it was “something that we’d try to retain,” with the key word being “try.” “Try” means that there is implied success or there is implied failure, and fortunately for us, I am here to make the case that there is a chance that Tim Burton and the rest of the crew who worked on this film we love so much failed to capture a neutral setting for Charlie’s town. Additionally, if we stay on the overanalyzing Burton’s own words train for a while longer, we see in his follow up statement that he says Charlie’s town was “set it in its own city” while not describing “where it really is.” Does this mean that there is an actual location in mind, but said location is being occulted in order to tell the story in a certain manner? Who knows? Was his statement a slip of the tongue? Perhaps. A poor choice of words that does not accurately capture the message he hopes to convey? Perhaps as well. Is this overanalyzation of a couple of words uttered by a man famous for his social awkwardness, and thus can oftentimes words his responses to things in a less than clear fashion? You betcha! But hey, if you’ve read this far, then there’s a good chance you think there’s something to my theory that Charlie’s town does have a real-world location. Yet, before we can uncover where Charlie’s town is located, we have to dispense with the theory of the case that Tim Burton presents as key to understanding the nature of where Charlie’s town is located, and that is the notion that the town “has both an American sensibility and a British sensibility.”