Why Hershey’s Is Being Sued Over Reese’s Candy
The Hershey Company has been accused of ‘deceptive marketing’ in a new class action lawsuit filed this month in Florida. Above, Hershey Co. Reese's brand peanut butter products are displayed for sale at the the Hershey Chocolate World store in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Friday, July 13, 2018. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Frustrated Reese’s fans in Florida are accusing The Hershey Company of misrepresenting what the well-liked peanut butter candy looked like on the packaging of several products.
Four people filed a class action lawsuit against the candy company this month, alleging that The Hershey Company–which manufactures Reese’s Peanut Butter products–violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act through its updated packaging designs for nine specific Reese’s products.
The lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by NPR, alleges that the four plaintiffs purchased some of the products in question “based on a false and deceptive representation of an artistic carving contained on said product.”
Photos included in the court documents provide examples of the allegations by contrasting the packaging with the candy allegedly found inside. The examples suggest that part of the chocolate coating had been carved away, revealing the peanut butter inside to create the detailing on footballs, jack-o’-lanterns and more.
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The lawsuit alleges that the actual candy inside that packaging did not include the carvings and were instead “blanks.”
The nine Reese’s products that the lawsuit mentions are: Reese's Medal, Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins, Reese’s White Pumpkins, Reese’s Pieces Pumpkins, Reese’s Peanut Butter Ghost, Reese’s White Ghost, Reese’s Peanut Butter Bats, Reese's Peanut Butter footBalls and Reese’s Peanut Butter Shapes Assortment Snowmen Stockings Bells.
The packaging for these products “were not always deceptive and misleading,” the lawsuit claims, but were allegedly changed “to boost sales” in the last few years.
The purported discrepancy between the packaging and the products led the plaintiffs to accuse Hershey’s of “falsely representing several Reese’s Peanut Butter products as containing explicit carved out artistic designs when there are no such carvings in the actual products and the products are blanks.”
The lawsuit further maintains that the company’s “deceptive advertising” led customers “to purchase the Products because of the cool and beautiful carved out designs on the Products’ packaging, when they would have not purchased the Products if they were truthfully advertised.”
The Hershey Company was the target of a similar lawsuit focused on the design of some Reese’s Peanut Butter products late last year.
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