HERSHEY, Pa. (CBS) – A Florida woman is upset about the lack of designs on Reese’s holiday-themed peanut butter candy - and now she’s taking parent company Hershey to court over it.
Cynthia Kelly filed a federal class-action lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Florida, alleging several Reese’s products don’t match their photos as depicted on the wrappers.
For example, Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins are merely pumpkin-shaped hunks of peanut-butter-stuffed chocolate, and the actual product has no Jack O’lantern-style carvings as the wrapper depicts, Kelly alleges.
You know what? Fuck 'em. I don’t know what she was expecting other than chalky, chocolate-scented paste that only vaguely resembles the already cheerless designs on the packaging. But if she wants to wring some money out of the behemoth that’s hoovering up cocoa beans from half of Africa for pennies, grown by people who’ve never tasted chocolate in their lives, and use it to buy herself a boat, I say go for it. Fuck 'em up, petty chocolate woman. From the photos it kind of looks like you have a point.
Her argument is that they aren’t the same as the packaging. The Halloween shapes show a jack o lantern or a face on a bat. Open the candy, it’s not there. The lawsuit is to stop printing the packages with faces that aren’t on the candy.
Oh, I agree, it looks from the photos like she’s got a point. Without knowing much more than the photos in her filing, my first reaction is that she should get paid for a couple different reasons. I’m just saying Hershey’s is overall so shitty that the lies on the packaging should be the least of her worries about it.
The only thing this results in is cost passed on to consumers and more anal packaging caveats.
Sure, Hershey’s broke the one rule of advertising, but god forbid we do anything about it, right? What ever would the consumer do without the bare necessity that is… weirdly-shaped Reese’s cups?
I say this as someone who loves Reese’s, too. A reckoning in marketing law is long overdue. IMO it shouldn’t be legal to use anything other than unadulterated photos of your product as it appears off the production line.
I mean all they have to do is write “serving suggestion” on the front. It’s how the various oodles of noodles companies get away with showing meat and vegetables on the packages of their carbohydrate and salt rations.
I don’t think that would fly. Sure you can make a “serving suggestion” picture of spaghetti with some photogenic sauce and on a box of spaghetti that’s perfectly adequate but if you put the same picture on a pack of Farfalle you deserve to be in trouble. Who the hell ever wants Farfalle they cook unevenly.
“Serving suggestion” is “product and other stuff”, not “random shit”.
How do you feel about the bite taken out of it to reveal the peanut butter inside?
Someone needs to take a bite out of all of them, so they’re true to the picture
I would say that is more of a verb than a noun. It islike shoes that show a person running.
False. If the company could jack up prices they already would have, and it would be extra profits.
They’d be advertising how their packaging is the best because it’s made from asbestos if we had consumer protection laws that didn’t allow these pririvate lawsuits.
Well, I’m sold.
IANAL but…
I hate this “don’t bite the hand that feeds” attitude of capitalism. Everyone waxes poetic about the free market and then when a company gets their comeuppance there’s all this “nooo they will punish the consumers” crying.
Well which is it? Does a free market exist or do consumers have no power?
Yes.
Oh no… who cares.
Your free market ideology will make consumers move and buy from a better brand.
Oh no, junk food will be more expensive and people might buy less of it. That would be the worst