The lawsuit’s been widely covered so usually I wouldn’t bother linking, but there’s been mockery over it, and the mockery is wrong.
Just look at the picture.
Almost anything you buy, the picture on the package is prettier than what’s inside, but the imagery on these candy wrappers is PhotoShop BS, a flat-out lie.
I stand with Cynthia Kelly, and hope Hershey pays her the $5M she’s asking.
Dec 29 (Reuters) - Hershey has been sued by a Florida woman who said its holiday-themed Reese’s peanut butter candies lack the artistic details shown on the packaging that make them worth buying.
In a proposed federal class action filed on Thursday and seeking at least $5 million, Cynthia Kelly accused Hershey of deceiving reasonable consumers by falsely promising that its candies would contain “explicit carved out artistic designs.”
She said she would not have paid $4.49 in October at an Aldi for a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, had she known that the candies not only lacked the “cute looking” carved eyes and mouth shown on the packaging, but any carvings at all.
The complaint said Hershey’s labels “are materially misleading and numerous consumers have been tricked and misled by the pictures on the products’ packaging.”
It cited several videos on Google’s YouTube, and included illustrations such as a Reese’s Peanut Butter footBall shaped like a football, but missing the laces shown on the packaging.
Hershey did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment. Kelly’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a similar request.
The plaintiff filed her lawsuit in the federal court in Tampa, Florida.
She is seeking damages for Florida purchasers of Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, White Pumpkins, Pieces Pumpkins, Peanut Butter Ghost, White Ghost, Peanut Butter Bats, Peanut Butter footBalls and Peanut Butter Shapes Assortment Snowmen Stockings Bells for violations of that state’s consumer protection laws.
Kelly’s lawyer has also filed lawsuits accusing Burger King and Taco Bell of selling food that when served looks less enticing than advertised.
The case is Kelly v Hershey Co, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, No. 23-02977.
I support this lawsuit simply because I remember when Reese peanut butter cups were about twice the diameter they are now. Fuck Reese. I want my giant '90s diabetes discs back.
I’m not informed enough to dispute this, but I am interested in a source.
Are you sure you weren’t just half the size back then?
I think our brains are decently reliable taking size relative to our own growth into account. This isn’t Reese’s, but people noticed Cadbury eggs doing the same thing, and Cadbury gave the same explanation you did “they didn’t get smaller, you got bigger!” and it seemed like a plausible enough explanation, so no one really questioned it.
…until some dude on Conan dug one of from several years prior and showed them side by side to reveal a significant reduction in volume lol:
https://youtu.be/TlXLCrzpToo?t=258
OP isn’t remembering the candy relative to his once-kid-sized body; it’s just shrinkflation. Again.
Everyone is also assuming I wasn’t a giant baby or in some kind of Benjamin Button situation.
Well…totinos pizzas are 2 to 3 oz smaller than they used to be, el montero burritos used to come in 10 packs and not 8. M&M’s “share size” is about the same size as what m&m’s regular size was. Bacon used to pretty much exclusively come in 16oz packages and now most are 12oz. Cereal and chips for smaller while the packaging stayed the same size. Coffee went from 16 oz packages to 12oz and now many are even like 11oz. Some shredded cheeses keep trying to drop down to 7oz packages instead of 8oz. Fast food sizes are all down like fries and Wendy’s double stack burger that has gotten much smaller.
I’m old enough that none of this was me just not remembering or that it all seemed bigger because I was a kid. This all gaped after I grew up.
Also, dear totinos pizza: I’ll forgive you, but only if you start selling zesty Italian pizzas again. It’s been like 25 years. I want them back!
Most half gallon ice cream containers aren’t any more.
Is that why I saw Blue Bell with a “still a half gallon” label??? Damn
Yes. Ice cream has been shrinking for two decades.
probably not available now: https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/giant-reeses-peanut-butter-cup/
available: 2 cups, 1/2 lb each https://shop.hersheys.com/our-brands/reeses/034000430093.html
Surprised that this doesn’t also mention the Xmas trees, the worst offenders of all.
You got something against chocolate butt plugs?!
No, but those “trees” are not flared nearly enough. Be safe.
are not flared nearly enough. Be safe.
The real lawsuit is always in the comments.
Shit I thought they were talking about the foil wrapped ones that put the fancy design of pumpkins or Santa on the foil that in no way actually makes you think the candy looks like that.
I forgot about this packaging. Yeah, fuck that. It shows the candy with a face, but it doesn’t actually have a face on the candy.
Recent SNL sketch on the subject:
FYI: It’s not loading on Piped.
I have never once had a video load correctly on Piped. Does it hate ad blockers or something?
I don’t think it’s piped but YouTube doing weird shit. They work just fine if I actually go to piped and find the video manually; it’s just direct links that stay a rotating circle forever.
I’m just mad I didn’t do it.
The halloween bats had the same problem. I didn’t know my disappointment was worth 5 million tho…
The question isn’t what your disappointment is worth to you, or any one customer. It’s what the deception was worth to Hershey, and the penalty should be enough to deter such deception in the future.
It is time false advertising gets punished, they have been very good at coasting the rules and fooling everybody, even No Man’s Sky got off free even though they had things on the trailer that only ended up in-game years later.
No Man’s Sky is great though, and the studio implemented a stupid number of features after launch, out of their own pocket. Internet Historian had a really good piece on them.
Yeah, now, but they absolutely deserved it at launch.
She’ll never get 5M. Not even close. This will settle for costs + maybe a new car.
I’m not sure why people on here continue to pus the narrative that it’s one person getting paid.
Has nobody here heard of a class action lawsuit before? Literally every post about this states it in the article.
Smells like corporate astroturfing to me.
I’m always amused when people on Lemmy think corporations are so concerned about a topic under discussion by 7 people on an unknown social media site that it requires some clandestine intervention.
Sometimes, quite often actually, the astroturfing is provided by volunteers — people who simply love whatever corporation they’re defending, or libertarians who love corporations in general.
Most of these cases never do.
But the point is to threaten. Because look at that false advertising? They shouldn’t be getting away with this or make it acceptable.
Oh for sure
As long as it stops these companies from using fake and misleading packaging
Who cares? It’s chocolate. No one goes “oh this doesn’t look like chocolate, I’m offended.” They open it for the taste and it’s seasonal to go with the spirit of the holiday that is in correlation.
I don’t see this as a reason to sue anyone.
You’re getting downvoted because anything that isn’t full-throated condemnation is being a “corporate apologist”, but is this really what we want to see corporations being held accountable for? That their chocolate shapes aren’t shaped “right”? They’re poisoning our planet and profiting off of slavery. This is the smallest of small things to be punishing them over and it’s being treated like some crowning achievement. They should 100% be litigated into oblivion, but this ain’t it. This is a joke and should be treated as such.
But the worst things they do are not illegal and they are not going to be held accountable in any way for those
Right — much bigger and worse corporations than Hershey get away with much bigger and worse crimes, so this case should be dismissed.
It’s a class action, so the settlement ultimately depends on the size of the class.
Yeah it was poorly written title and I didn’t spend time on details 😐
Imagine caring about something actually important this much. Fucking litigious ass Americans. Your candy wasn’t the right shape! Better sue somebody!
Agreed, this is fucking stupid.
It is stupid, but it’s also an important principle.
Companies make money based off these lies, much more than $5 million.
People are more like to pay more for something that looks like what they put on the front of the box vs was is actually in the box.
They shouldn’t be allowed to straight up lie like that to trick people out of their money.
So it’s AOK for enormous corporations to lie?
Is this even a thing to litigate over?
False advertising? Yes, very much so.
Yeha but in this case it is pretty silly. Like… it’s still the same piece of candy. I get it, but there are many instances of false advertisement that are actually concerning because they lie about the quality or size of the product. This one is just lacking a smiley face, which probably means you got more chocolate.
What I’m saying is that, yeha, this is 100% false advertisement, but it isn’t alarming at all. Like, I don’t see the malice behind it. There are a lot of instances which are just pure evil.
It’s pretty sad to see this is the case that will make them pay, when we’re drowning in even worse cases of false advertisement.
Believe it or not, two lawsuits can actually happen at the same time. The entire court system doesn’t grind to a halt to handle this one case of false representation.
It ain’t Gaza, ain’t civil rights, but hell yeah. It’s a giant corporation lying to people, and I’ll always be rooting for anyone who objects to that.
It’s pointless and petty to a ridiculous level, besides frivolous but I guess Florida must rise to its fame.
It’s a “food” item, inside a wrapper that addresses to a specific season, in an excessively obvious cartoonish style.
“serving suggestion” comes to mind
If someone was to move to pursue litigation over excessive quantities of sugar, preservatives, origins of the chocolate, that would be commendable.
It also shows it with a bite taken out of it, yet any consumer would reasonably be upset if their candy had a bite already taken out of it.
Reese’s have always been fully covered with chocolate, and their advertising and packaging has for many years shown that inside was peanut butter, I don’t see how this is any different. I think a stronger argument is that many of the holiday shakes are simple lumps that in no way resemble the thing it’s supposed to be, but as filed I don’t see her winning this. Her best hope is that hersheys will settle for a few ten thousand to make this go away, but even that seems like a long shot.
It also shows it with a bite taken out of it, yet any consumer would reasonably be upset if their candy had a bite already taken out of it.
The question is whether a typical consumer would not have purchased the product had the packaging been more true to the product. The detailed etchings would clearly be perceived as a positive feature that is missing from the product by most consumers, while the missing bite would not.
This is akin to McDonald’s burgers not actually having sesame seeds. They don’t add any flavor, and they don’t add any more texture than the detailed etchings would - I would argue less. Would it be okay for them to omit sesame seeds but keep them in their marketing material?
The concept that substantial embellishment in marketing material is morally acceptable and to be expected needs to die. Not only is it disingenuous at best, but it should be clear from your own comment that there will never be consensus on the boundaries of false advertising.
Personally, I avoid the holiday ones because of their “fun” shapes. I don’t know if it’s because ratios are different or the candy is just different because they make it somewhere else, but the holiday ones always taste worse.
I don’t see how it’s different than buying a bag of peeps and getting a bag of marshmallows.
It still tastes the same, why are these uppity poors complaining?
Looking at the picture, the packaging says pumpkin not jack o lantern and I’d say that looks like a pumpkin.
But there’s a picture on the front of a candy that doesn’t look like the candy inside.
I think $5 million is a lot of money for this, but the complaint is valid.
There’s also a bite taken out of every single other product wrapping they have. Are people expecting them to come out of the package with bites missing now too?
It’s the only way to know they’re not poisoned, along with proof of life for the taster.
So we’re going to waste the court’s time and give the lawyers thousands of dollars for nothing meaningful to change? And before anyone says “but they’ll have to change the packaging and be more honest”. This happened with Red Bull a few years ago and and now they can’t say it gives you wings but all their commercials say it “gives you wiiiings”. So Hershey’s will just have to put a tiny disclaimer that says it doesn’t have a face. I think companies should be honest in their marketing but they’re always going to look for the easiest and least expensive option and making so every product they distribute look exactly like the package isn’t it.
I’m not doing anything of the sort. This was Hershey’s fuck up. Maybe it discourages the next corporation from using deceptive marketing.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, so they’re going to waste the courts time? Also, read what I said about Red Bull, they don’t think twice, they just come up with other ways around it.
It’s a valid complaint, but maybe not a valid lawsuit. It’s a promotional image. I’ve also seen commercials where mcnuggets are going on adventures, but I have yet to see one be alive much less sentient. Does that entitle me to McDonald’s money?
It reminds me of how in some countries with low literacy rates, Gerber baby food didn’t put the baby on the label, so people who couldn’t read wouldn’t think it’s pureed baby.
Edit: Just to be clear, screw Hershey’s anyway. But this seems silly.
Good find, thank you. Honestly didn’t know that was a myth.
How on earth is this worth 5 mil?? At best, she’s due a refund of 4.49.
It’s a US thing called class action, which basically means that the lawsuit is filed on behalf of many consumers to collectively demand remedies.
Imagine if 1 million people bought $5 worth of candy…
Class action lawsuit means that she probably will only get about that back.
It’s a stupid lawsuit because it’s merely going to end with some people getting a $5 check while the lawyers will get millions.
But Hershey’s will lose millions too
And they’ll just raise prices to cover.
More importantly, they’ll learn to be truthful in advertising. Raising prices doesn’t always mean more profit if it results in lower sales. They’ll have to think more carefully in the future which is the entire point.
lol, no the won’t. They’ll just add tiny little fine print no one will read.
This is the truth folks don’t get, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew these were nothing but badly remolded peanut butter cups. No reasonable expectation of detailed artwork is implied. Are you going to sue M&M for lack of faces on the candy? I hate corporate bullshit as much as the next guy, but this is going to benefit nobody but some lawyers who’ve made a career of feeding on stupid people.
Holy shit this is beyond frivolous. I hope she gets banned from filing lawsuits.
Isn’t it more frivolous for the company to intentionally falsify the images on the packaging to increase sales? They deserve to be held to the same standards as all other companies or else the false advertising will only worsen.
Wth are you talking about? No other person or company is held to that “standard”. This is just circle jerking over “sticking it” to a corporation over the tiniest possible thing they could be punished for. It’s absurd.
The FTC has extensive federal labeling laws for products sold in the US. Products cannot be misrepresented to consumers. It is not up to me to decide where to draw the line of what is going too far, but I welcome the opportunity for a judge to decide if Reeces overstepped that line or not.
It is important to challenge these cases or else corporations will lie on packaging more and more. This is not a hypothetical, this is a real problem that the FTC has faught to gain control over for decades to get to the point where we are now where consumers more or less trust packaging to be a fair representation of the product they are paying for.
i’m fine living in a world where candy does not have faces on it when the packaging says it does. I dont really care.
Neither do it, it’s more about enforcing federal label laws and truth in advertising. Why let corporations lie when they could simply be truthful? If we allow them to lie a little this year, they will lie more next year. That’s how product packaging used to be until these things were actually enforced.
I’m not even saying that Reeces deserves to lose this case, but I think it is fair for a judge to rule on it because it does seem deceptive.
well if they lie in a manner thats substantial then we can sue them. But this is such a small issue its akin to suing a restraunt because their was hair in your food. Like i get its not ideal buts thats life. Small things should stay small.
If you were born in '71 as your username suggests, then the stance you have makes a lot of sense. Fucking get with the times grandfather
It is because I got my username when I was 7 and forgot my roblox password so I added a 1 to it.
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