The shape vocabulary of Dutch drop is the most legible non-verbal information in the average Dutch supermarket aisle. A practised eye can stand at the licorice display and read, from the visible shapes alone and without consulting any label, the variety, salt grade, target consumer, and approximate flavour of every product on offer. The convention is industry-wide rather than brand-specific; a honingdrop made by Klene and one made by Venco will both be hexagonal and amber, because that combination is what the Dutch consumer reads as "honey licorice." A manufacturer who broke the convention would be punished by confused buyers.
This entry catalogues the principal shapes. None is universal — small regional variations exist — but the set described here will cover at least 90% of products on a typical supermarket shelf. The accompanying SVG plate shows nine of the most common forms. The shape vocabulary should be read in conjunction with the colour grammar described in the zoete drop entry.
The classical lozenges
The four classical lozenges are the ruit (rhombus, ~25mm tall), munt (coin, ~22mm diameter), ovaal (oval, ~25mm long), and honingdrop (hexagon, ~22mm). These four are the workhorses of the Dutch licorice industry and account for perhaps 60% of total drop volume by weight. All four are produced as both harde drop (hard) and zachte drop (soft), and all four span the salt-sweet axis from sweet to dubbelzout. The shape itself does not predict flavour or salt; it predicts only that the product is a standard adult-oriented lozenge.
The ruit is the most common shape across the assertive end of the spectrum and the form most closely associated with the salted varieties. The munt — coin — is more often a sweet form, and is the shape used for most flavoured drops (mint, anise, eucalyptus). The ovaal is a workhorse with no strong flavour association. The hexagonal honingdrop, however, is reliably honey-flavoured: a hexagonal amber-coloured drop in a Dutch supermarket is, with very few exceptions, honingdrop.
The functional shapes
The staaf (rod, ~50mm long) is a soft licorice shape strongly associated with the children's market and with chewable licorice rope. It is essentially never produced in salted form. The schoolkrijt ("schoolchalk," ~40mm cylinder) is the soft-licorice cousin coated in a fine layer of white salmiak salt; the contrast between the soft sweet body and the sharp salty exterior is the entire point of the form, and is the shape's defining feature.
The blokje (cube, ~15mm) and kokindje (slightly larger, with two pointed ends) are both small soft forms most often associated with the strong salted ranges. The kokindje, in particular, has become the de facto shape for premium dubbelzoute products in the past three decades, and is the form in which most adult specialist licorice is now sold.
The figural shapes
The kat (cat, ~30mm), beertje (small bear, ~15mm), kindertje (child figure, ~20mm), engeltje (angel, ~25mm), and other figural shapes are essentially exclusive to the children's market and to the sweet end of the spectrum. These shapes are the children's-licorice cousins of the gummy bear and serve a similar marketing function: they signal sweetness, softness, and child-appropriateness without requiring the buyer to read any text. A figural drop in a Dutch supermarket is, with extremely few exceptions, zoete drop.
The brand-specific shapes
A small number of shapes are house-specific. The Klene Autodrop range produces vehicle shapes — cars, trucks, fire engines, tractors — that exist nowhere else and have no analogue in any other Dutch licorice line. The Red Band Wine Gum Roll, although technically not drop in the strict sense, is sometimes shelved alongside the licorice and is the only drum-rolled licorice product on the Dutch market. The Venco Spek-en-bonen (bacon-and-beans), a stripe-laminated licorice, is essentially the only laminated form found in the Dutch trade.
These house-specific shapes are recent additions — most date from the past forty years — and represent the limited willingness of major manufacturers to depart from the convention. The fact that there are so few of them is a measure of how strongly the convention holds; the fact that there are any at all is evidence that the convention is not absolute.
The unwritten grammar
The full shape vocabulary is, like most folk taxonomies, unwritten. There is no reference document on which Dutch confectioners agree, and the conventions described here are reconstructed from the contents of supermarket shelves over the past forty years and from interviews with industry figures. The persistence of the convention, despite the absence of any formal rule, is a feature of the Dutch licorice market that distinguishes it from most other European confectionery sectors. It functions, in practical terms, like the typographic conventions of a long-established print tradition: it is observed because everyone observes it, and because departing from it would impose a needless cost on the eater.