Awaiting the Count Chocula/Twilight marketing tie-in

[sigma7]

I'm not one for legal wonkery, but this is pretty wonderful on a variety of levels: it turns out you can't actually sue the makers of Cap'n Crunch because you led to believe that crunchberries were real fruit. Which is awesome enough on its own, but the details are golden:

The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit.

"Otherwise redeemed by fruit" is quickly worming its way into my heart as one of the best turns of phrase I've read in a long time.

According to the complaint, Sugawara and other consumers were misled not only by the use of the word "berries" in the name, but also by the front of the box, which features the product's namesake, Cap'n Crunch, aggressively "thrusting a spoonful of 'Crunchberries' at the prospective buyer."

Say what you will of the plaintiff's intellectual capacities, but whoever crafted the "thrusting a spoonful" bit has earned my respect. "Thrusting Spoonful" goes atop my list of hypothetical band names.

But to put this entire debacle in context, the final graf from the blog entry:

Judge England also noted another federal court had "previously rejected substantially similar claims directed against the packaging of Fruit Loops [sic] cereal, and brought by these same Plaintiff attorneys." He found that their attack on "Crunchberries" should fare no better than their prior claims that "Froot Loops" did not contain real froot.

Comments

[endersgame3.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA! that was hilarious.

agressively thrusting a spoonful just simply must be worked into my regular vocabulary now!

[blemt.livejournal.com]

The really sad sub story here isn't that these people are suing. It's that people have no comprehension what so ever about how you real labels on boxes. The amount of enabling as a society that we've engaged in over the last 20 years is truly scary.

This ranks up there with listing decapitation as a contraindication for CPR. How the fuck do you do CPR if the person HAS NO HEAD??? The only reason that is listed- cause someone tried doing CPR on a headless person...

People need to learn basic reading and common sense.

[chaobell]

Oh God, laughing so hard.

But... if one looks at that picture of Cap'n Crunch aggressively thrusting Crunchberries in your face (dare you to not hear "unf unf unf" in your head next time you see a box), could one not see that the "crunchberries" are not actual berries?

[phoenixfire12.livejournal.com]

Each generation just keeps getting dumber and dumber, don't they. And People are shocked that I don't ever want to have kids. Updating my reasons for not wanting to have children, I'm afraid that even if they got a "C" average they'd probably turn out to be among the smartest house-apes on the planet and subsequently harassed and ridiculed for it. To me that's just frightening. I'd really hate to have to take them to therapy for something so tragic as that.

[purplesquirrel.livejournal.com]

Huh? No Froot in Froot Loops? Shocked, I am.

[nute.livejournal.com]

This is why I object to the false advertising presented by "Fruit By The Foot", because as I can plainly tell, the fruit is not by my foot. So I am obviously owed money for libelous mental distress.

[samson-of-5.livejournal.com]

Is it no wonder that today's recent generation isn't expected to outlive their parents?

I have another one...Fruity Pebbles. Who wouldn't want to eat fruit flavored rocks?