Confessions of a Former News Editor - You’re being frivolous
by Ryan Pugh
A couple of weeks ago I saw a news story that made me think we are on our way out as a society.
The news story I am referencing was about how the Hershey candy manufacturer –which owns the Reese’s brand – announced it was adding a disclaimer to the packaging of their Halloween-themed pumpkin candies.
You may be asking yourself, why a disclaimer? A peanut allergy concern? Something about the material in the packaging?
No to all of those.
The reason for the disclaimer is the pumpkins shown carved into Jack-o’-lanterns in the photo on the front of the package are not a depiction of the actual chocolate and peanut butter treats inside because someone noticed this (understandable) anomaly and attempted to sue Hershey’s for false advertising.
Luckily, the case was dismissed but the fact that someone tied up our legal system to sue a candy manufacturer over something so insignificant boggles my mind.
Like what was the scenario that led to this person to feel so wronged by the people at Hershey that they felt they needed financial compensation? Did this ruin someone’s Halloween party? Here’s what my twisted mind figures happened. A woman was shopping for a Halloween party and came upon these Reese’s Pumpkins with their carved Jack-o’-lantern pieces of candy displayed on the front of the package and thought, “won’t these look cute for my party” and purchased many packages of the product only to discover when she opened the candy minutes before the party that the individual candies were not carved leading to extreme disappointment. Moreover, I believe the person was going to pass it off that she had carved each individual candy into a festive Jack-o’-lantern much like – and I am dating myself here – the old Rice Krispies commercial where the woman makes it look like she spent hours making Rice Krispie Treats when it only takes around 10 minutes to make the dish.
More than likely the person that brought this suit is a serial litigant looking to make a quick buck off something extremely arbitrary. I mean, who was harmed by these candies not having eyes and crooked smiles carved into the chocolate coating?
A few years back, some dope filed a suit against a national sandwich chain for selling foot long sandwiches that didn’t, brace yourself, measure exactly 12 inches. Who cares? If a sandwich is not a foot long, how exactly does that impact someone’s day-to-day life that much? Or, just for fun let’s just say the sandwich in question this place makes are 13 inches in length and it is advertised a foot long (we’ll call it a Baker’s Sandwich) would anyone complain? I remember when I was a kid, my parents and I ate at a restaurant in Rimersburg that had a popcorn shrimp special where they served 21 shrimp and fries for like six dollars and I said to my parents, if I don’t get 21 shrimp, I’m going to complain and my parents asked a question I hadn’t considered: “Will you make a fuss if they give you 22 shrimp?” Basically, it all evens out in the end.
But to bring a lawsuit over something cosmetic just baffles me.
I hate to tell the person that filed the suit but there is false advertising all over the food industry. Such as, if you see a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings in a television commercial just be aware that the plump bird you see on your screen is raw and has been coated with lacquer to make it appear to be a delicious Thanksgiving meal. Or when you see a pizza with stringy mozzarella cheese when a slice is pulled away from the pie, just know the cheese is glue.
The doofus who filed this case obviously didn’t grow up in the era of ads on the backs of comic books because if you wanted false advertising, you got it by the boatload on the back cover of old Superman, Spiderman, X-Men, etc. Whether it was sea monkeys, foam dinosaurs that were supposed to grow to immense size when dunked I water, stink bombs, spy cameras, there was no limit to the amount of junk found in these ads that were promoted to be the best things ever.
Please don’t tell me I was the only young boy who fell into the trap of buying X-Ray Specs.
You want to talk about disappointment, strap those things on your face and look at your hand with a light behind it and all you got to see was your hand, but it was red. For you see, in the ad, it was made to believe you could see through your skin right to the bone with these wonders that sold for something like $3.95.
Was I humiliated when I discovered it was all a scam? You bet. I felt like Ralphie on “The Christmas Story” when he finds out the real purpose of the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. Did I try and file a lawsuit to get proper compensation for being duped in this boondoggle? Of course not. I just tucked this one away in a file in my brain titled “I should have known better.”
My dad had the best advice on not getting taken advantage of; he always said, “If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.”
In the immortal words of Janis Joplin, “That’s it.”
