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There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

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Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#11

Post by saurik »

h2odragon wrote: post #7

I saw a "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Gummy Candy". Can I sue someone for that? Not necessarily for fraud. that the product exists is an offense to human dignity. Then we can go after the people making "Fruity Pebbles flavor" $everything. I've seen pancake syrup, I expect floor wax and lighter fluid versions next.

FWIW those gummies are fruit-flavored. They are really just designed as a gag, and that's certainly why I bought them for a friend of mine (someone who eats way too much macaroni and cheese). Do you also want to sue people for making whoopie cushions and fake vomit?

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#12

Post by c4ptnjack »

quitit wrote: post #4

They both contain alcohol. The one that is labelled "whiskey" contains whiskey, the one that is not labelled "whiskey" doesn't contain whiskey. Should a rational consumer find this to be deceptive?

Did you read the article?

That is not the case whatsoever... They labeled them all as containing whiskey but none of them did. Just whiskey flavorings.

The rational consumer should find this deceptive because it says it has one ingredient while not actually including that ingredient at all.

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#13

Post by reeckoh »

Sounds like they should label it more clearly, but this story looks like a funny hack to me.

Some states only allow the sale of beer and wine in places like gas stations and grocery stores. You can't sell whiskey there, but you can sell spiced malt beverages.

Unrelated, I really like that NPR has a script-free "text.npr.org" subdomain.

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#14

Post by Rebelgecko »

brailsafe wrote: post #10

On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not, but there seems to be an increases prevalence of clever package design that tries to obscure the fact that there is no chocolate in "Chocolatey Chip Cookies" or any Dark Chocolate in Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Protein Granola bars or w/e. But they're on sa…

This predates inflation, but i think it's fascinating to look at the "ice cream" aisle at my grocery store. Most of the items can't legally call themselves ice cream (not enough milk content or too much of ingredients like corn syrup) so the packaging often has some small text with a low contrast against the background color that uses some weird terminology like "frozen dairy dessert".

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#15

Post by wildzzz »

detaro wrote: post #3

> The 99-cent bottles are sold in 170,000 stores, including gas stations and grocery stores, prompting some customers to wonder what products they presumed to contain liquor were doing there Is it many US states where such places can't sell liquor? (I know there's some areas with quite strict rules, but was surprised that wasn't explicitly referenced in the article)

My state only sells liquor at state-run stores. Imagine my surprise when I saw Fireball in airplane bottles at the grocery store. I probably would have bought some if I had been in the market for something awful without a second glance. Turns out its just like cinnamon whiskey flavored malt beverage, I guess like maddog but smaller? Good thing the liquor store is nextdoor.

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#16

Post by DangitBobby »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #6
quitit wrote: post #4

They both contain alcohol. The one that is labelled "whiskey" contains whiskey, the one that is not labelled "whiskey" doesn't contain whiskey. Should a rational consumer find this to be deceptive?

> malt beverage with natural whisky & other flavors and carmel color this is lexically ambiguous and I'm not going to blame anyone, especially someone buying 99c bottles of fake whiskey at a convenience store, for mis-understanding it and thinking it meant it contains whiskey. I do think the headline here is disingenuous to say "consumers" are suing. Some class-action-mill law firm is suing. This seems like yet anoth…

Not to mention, the full sized version of the product is "cinammon whiskey" and it's highly unusual that their tiny bottled version doesn't have any whiskey at all.

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#17

Post by fallowkevin »

saurik wrote: post #11
h2odragon wrote: post #7

I saw a "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Gummy Candy". Can I sue someone for that? Not necessarily for fraud. that the product exists is an offense to human dignity. Then we can go after the people making "Fruity Pebbles flavor" $everything. I've seen pancake syrup, I expect floor wax and lighter fluid versions next.

FWIW those gummies are fruit-flavored. They are really just designed as a gag, and that's certainly why I bought them for a friend of mine (someone who eats way too much macaroni and cheese). Do you also want to sue people for making whoopie cushions and fake vomit?

Wait, under the logic of the article couldn't you sue because they're not macaroni and cheese flavored? Or like... at least not savory?

Those Jelly Belly beans that they rebranded as Bertie Bott's have a "popcorn" flavor, so we definitely have the technology to do butter adjacent flavorings...

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#18

Post by fallowkevin »

brailsafe wrote: post #10

On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not, but there seems to be an increases prevalence of clever package design that tries to obscure the fact that there is no chocolate in "Chocolatey Chip Cookies" or any Dark Chocolate in Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Protein Granola bars or w/e. But they're on sa…

Well to be fair how often is chocolate actually chocolate flavor?

One of the cafés I jokingly call it the "luxury space communist café" (since it recently unionized and is next to an electronics store and a buncha designer shops, which has an... interesting effect... on the customer base.)

Anyways, when you set aside the decor and are willing to tolerate a dull roar of vocal fry until you can get your headphones in, it ends up being pretty damn conducive to getting some deep work done. (Water dispenser, power plugs, espresso as bitter as my soul ... I guess designing for the user is feminine? Insert roll eyes emoji here.)

Anyways, they were selling these little squares of 100% dark cocoa and I got one with a crossoint since I was trying to cut back on the sweets and... yeah, they weren't kidding -- it's cocoa... not exactly sweet. Not all all in fact.

Reading your post reminded me of how that felt like a rip off, when really they gave me exactly what was promised -- it's just that Americans think "milk chocolate" when others would expect... something else.

So maybe sometimes they're not deceiving people, they're just trying to give them what they've conditioned them to want.

(God forbid someone have a cortado, everyone has to have a donut the size of a newborn's head with more sugar than a can of coke and a coffee the size of a loaf of bread.)

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#19

Post by brailsafe »

fallowkevin wrote: post #18
brailsafe wrote: post #10

On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not, but there seems to be an increases prevalence of clever package design that tries to obscure the fact that there is no chocolate in "Chocolatey Chip Cookies" or any Dark Chocolate in Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Protein Granola bars or w/e. But they're on sa…

Well to be fair how often is chocolate actually chocolate flavor? One of the cafés I jokingly call it the "luxury space communist café" (since it recently unionized and is next to an electronics store and a buncha designer shops, which has an... interesting effect... on the customer base.) Anyways, when you set aside the decor and are willing to tolerate a dull roar of vocal fry until you can get your headphones in,…

The high cocoa bars from Lindt or other brands are definitely a different vibe. I personally think they're pretty well differentiated here though, with a gigantic 70% or 95% on the front. But if you're unfamiliar with that type of flavour it would be a shock to the system and isn't really my vibe. I guess they're hoping you attribute more quality to them, but the flavor is so different that I'd have a hard time imagining someone wouldn't think of it as a completely different type of chocolate.

I guess what you're saying holds true for a lot of things, like people thinking that bitter dark roasted coffee being associated with quality, when it's often the opposite. I guess that would fall into somewhat misleading marketing influences though, whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of showing chocolate and calling it chocolate when in reality there isn't even cocoa in it at all, just palm oil.

I agree about the cortado, it bothers me how much sugar people get in their system without realizing quite how much or how bad it could be. If all the sugar you got was from an obvious dessert, you probably would have a hard time over-injesting it.

Re: There's no whiskey in mini bottles of Fireball, so customers are suing for fraud

#20

Post by brailsafe »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #14
brailsafe wrote: post #10

On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not, but there seems to be an increases prevalence of clever package design that tries to obscure the fact that there is no chocolate in "Chocolatey Chip Cookies" or any Dark Chocolate in Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Protein Granola bars or w/e. But they're on sa…

This predates inflation, but i think it's fascinating to look at the "ice cream" aisle at my grocery store. Most of the items can't legally call themselves ice cream (not enough milk content or too much of ingredients like corn syrup) so the packaging often has some small text with a low contrast against the background color that uses some weird terminology like "frozen dairy dessert".

Ya that one for sure predates inflation. I've been seeing it for at least 8 years I feel like. But in that case there are at least options most of the time. Like I can just get haagen-daas or something and not feel screwed. It's also a dessert, so I can just not get it at all or seldomly if the higher cost option is the only one using actual cream.

With more basic things from the shelf, I look at the ingredients and think "Nope, nope, nope, wow even that?, nope, oh this one... has no sugar but 1200mg of sodium wtf!?"

Like if I want sugar, I want to know the thing is a thing I shouldn't be just carelessly eating. I'll get cookies, or a slice of cake, or ya some ice cream. I don't want it in my fucking tomato sauce, and I don't want the tomatoes to actually be tomato-flavoured chunks

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