Migros, Switzerland’s largest grocery and cafe retail chain, is apologizing after consumers discovered images of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini on their coffee creamer packages. The story broke when a reader sent the German-language newspaper 20 Minuten a picture of the Hitler creamer:
#Migros schon wieder … http://t.co/MHdpRYY2DPpic.twitter.com/fBsQWyCHVc
— Loretta (@laRossa05) October 22, 2014
Individual coffee creamer packets in Switzerland are often designed with pastoral images of the countryside, other Swiss landmarks, or are used for image-heavy advertisements. But Migros is now apologizing for the representations of Hitler and Mussolini, with company representatives telling several international news sources that the packages slipped through their quality controls before reaching markets in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
“We apologize formally for this unforgivable blunder,” a company spokesman told 20 Minuten.
The slip-up occurred when an outside company called Karo Shipping GmbH asked Swiss dairy supplier and Migros subsidiary ELSA to provide 55 different creamer labels that used images from vintage cigar boxes. Migros representative Tristan Cerf told the New York Times today that the labels — which were not distributed through the company’s full retail network but instead shipped to some 100 restaurant and cafe outlets — were not approved by corporate. He told the Times:
“These aren’t images accompanying a book about World War II, but rather something meant to be enjoyed with coffee and a chocolate cake. You cannot put Pol Pot or a terrorist on a milk creamer.”
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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Gegen Dummheit kämpften Götter selbst vergebens. (Even the Gods have fought stupidity in vain.
So where is the Musolini picture? Collect them all.
Seriously, I’m sad for this psychopathic rejection of anything which has pictures of a small number of particular people on it. Napoleon gets his picture on things, no one batts and eye at Gengis Kahn or Mao. Loosen up!
Hitler the terrorist.
Hitler so frightened the international capitalists and the international communists that both teamed up to wage unlimited war upon Hitlers National Socialist German Workers Party government and its allies.
What followed was the cold war, and all of the confusion that plagues the people of the world today.
88/U.s.A.
This was intentionally done by someone, even if not approved by management. There are those out there who still really believe in oppression as a way of life. When I worked on a Swiss farm the major source of conflict was my insistence that Jews were just people like everyone else. The wife on the farm was an unabashed anti-Semite who would spew vile insults in the back of the house when Jewish customers bought bread or meat from her farm. It went so far, that one of the young employees began to swerve towards Hasidic Jews on the street as “a joke” when driving the 20 ton transport truck we used to haul hay down from the mountain. My favorite was the customer in the restaurant where I worked as a waitress, telling me that Jews were stingy. I told him if that is the case, he must be Jewish because he was such a lousy tipper. Ha ha the end of anti-Semitism. Not.