Drop the dead donkey lion!

I don’t like the new design, and I like the old Victorian design.

Helen Edwards, adjunct associate professor of marketing at London Business School, said the rebrand would help to reduce the risk of excluding potential buyers.“The story of it coming from religious belief could put the brand in an exclusionary space, especially if it was to go viral on X or TikTok,” she told the BBC.

When I’m shopping, I definitely look closely at the quote on the can, then look it up, and decide not to buy syrup because it turns out to be a bible verse…

    • @[email protected]
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      59 months ago

      I remember my mum telling me it was sleeping when I asked if it was dead. I doubted it and it led to discussions with my sisters and cousins. We would all look at the tin at my grandma’s house. Happy, simple times

    • @butterflyattack
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      59 months ago

      Me neither. And now I can’t see how I missed it.

  • MonsterMonster
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    159 months ago

    I never knew it was a festering dead lion. Seems to me that the marketing department is looking for something to do.

    • @thehatfox
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      29 months ago

      Well this latest cultural storm in a teacup has got people talking about Golden Syrup, so I suppose their marketing department is doing its job fairly well.

  • @[email protected]
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    149 months ago

    On one hand, it’s more inclusive, and better in line with a society that’s considerably less normatively Christian than in the Victorian era.

    OTOH, a quaint piece of weirdness has been replaced with something a lot more generic and anodyne. (And a brand of syrup having a decomposing lion carcass on the packaging was one of the things that makes you go WTF‽)

  • HeartyBeast
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    79 months ago

    When I’m shopping, I definitely look closely at the quote on the can, then look it up, and decide not to buy syrup because it turns out to be a bible verse…

    All it takes is a social media message to around a particular religious community who object and bam. There go substantial sales, I guess.

    You and I may not care. Others might

    • Flax
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      19 months ago

      Who in their right mind would, though? Samson seems to be revered in Christianity and Judaism and is also regarded in some Islamic writings (I don’t think a Samson reference would be enough to turn away Muslims, due to them respecting most Old Testament figures) and Hinduism kind of views all religions as the same/similar thing.

  • Echo Dot
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    39 months ago

    That is fascinating I never knew syrup came from dead lions. I wonder if you can get vegan syrup.

    • Flax
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      09 months ago

      It’s a reference to Samson in Judges 14:8-9

  • Lad
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    39 months ago

    Personally I don’t care, as long as I know what it is and the syrup inside remains the same.

  • @[email protected]
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    29 months ago

    It’s quite worrying that the link to religious belief may place it in an exclusionary space. I wouldn’t avoid halal slaughtered meat due to it’s link to religious belief in the same way that wouldn’t factor in to my choice of syrup.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    19 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The image of a dead lion being swarmed by bees is to be dropped from some of Lyle’s Golden Syrup packaging.

    A rebranded image of a lion’s head with a single bee will feature on products, including the firm’s plastic syrup and dessert bottles.

    But the classic Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin will be excluded from the rebrand, keeping its more than 150-year-old packaging design.

    According to the company’s website, Lyle had strong religious views, which is why the logo depicts the story of Samson from the Old Testament, in which Samson killed an attacking lion, and later noticed a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass.

    Helen Edwards, adjunct associate professor of marketing at London Business School, said the rebrand would help to reduce the risk of excluding potential buyers.

    “The story of it coming from religious belief could put the brand in an exclusionary space, especially if it was to go viral on X or TikTok,” she told the BBC.


    The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • tygerprints
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    09 months ago

    The dead lion logo does make me feel like they’re saying, this syrup is made from the excretions of dead animals. It’s just weird! The new design is much better in my view, and much more enticing to me as a consumer.

    • Flax
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      19 months ago

      It’s a reference to Samson in Judges 14:8-9

      • tygerprints
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        09 months ago

        Only in the UK would they think that makes an appopriate logo for a food stuff - or maybe in some corners of the US also. Religious folk are definitely very strange people.

          • tygerprints
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            19 months ago

            I’m an atheist myself and can’t dispute that I’m a weird person, but I have my reasons for my beliefs that are just as sound as anyone’s reasons for being religious. Moreso, because I’ve seen what is out there, and I know (more than anyone else) that there is no such thing as ‘God’ at all. And there doesn’t need to be. But, to each his own.

            • Flax
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              19 months ago

              Exactly. I’ve seen what I’ve seen and known what I know and done my research and came to the realisation that there is a God.

              Anyway, if the Bible isn’t real, how would having a famous story about Samson be any different to having a logo based on little red riding hood? Or the fact that “Goliath” in our society is basically a synonym for “large”

              • tygerprints
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                19 months ago

                And that’s fine if it works for you, but I hate to say it (and it won’t matter anyway) but - there really is not a god of any kind at all. Even if I wanted to believe in one, I now know for certain there isn’t any such thing, at least not by the definition humans use for what a ‘god’ is.

                The bible is real, it’s a real book - a work of fiction, but a real book. It has some interesting passages in it, but I don’t consider it any more “real” than the book the Wizard of Oz or any other work of fiction.

                • Flax
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                  19 months ago

                  That works for you as well! However, there is a God. Jesus is real. He really did die and rise from the dead again while claiming to be God. The arguments against the Bible usually boil down to arguments from silence, removing context, presuppositions and bad interpretation.