Hershey’s is being sued over ‘deceptive’ Reese’s packaging (2024)

Some choco-holics are taking Hershey’s to court.

Four people in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit against The Hershey Company, claiming Reese’s misrepresents what’s actually inside.

Nathan Vidal, Debra Kennick, Abdjul Martin and Eduardo Granados alleged that the company violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The Hershey Company is being accused 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 class-action suit claims violations on packaging designs for nine specific Reese’s products: Reese’s Medal, Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkin, 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 Reeses’s Peanut Butter Shapes Assorted Snowmen Stocking Bells.

Once the chocolate candies are removed from their packaging, the actual products are “blanks” with no designs or carve-outs, the20-page lawsuit obtained by NPR read.

“Hershey’s deceptive advertising is causing many consumers 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 suit read.

However, the customers said in the suit that the products’ packaging “were not always deceptive and misleading,” and that the company updated the packaging to include detailed carvings within the last two to three years to “boost sales and revenues.”

They are asking for an unspecified amount in compensatory damages, according to the suit, since they purchased the products in question “based on a false and deceptive representation of an artistic carving contained on said product.”

This isn’t the first time The Hershey Company was the target of a lawsuit regarding “deceptive” Reese’s Peanut Butter products.

In December 2023, a Florida woman claimed the company “tricked” customers through “misleading” packaging on Reese’s seasonal-shaped chocolates.

Cynthia Kelly, of Tampa, sued the chocolate giant for $5 million due to claims the packaging and the actual contents don’t match.

The lawsuit came after Kelly purchased the pumpkin-shaped chocolates at Aldi for $4.49, believing it “contained a cute looking carving of a pumpkin’s mouth and eyes as pictured on the product packaging.”