Aldi Now Selling Easter Candy Shaped Like Male Genitalia, See It Here
Aldi has been receiving a lot of social media attention lately for selling Easter candy that resembles male genitalia.
Grocery chain Aldi has long been known for its affordable, quality groceries—along with its signature coin-operated grocery carts, but recently Aldi in the UK has made the news over its Easter-shaped marshmallows. Intended to be similar to the Easter classic, Peeps, these holiday treats bore a little more resemblance to something else—male genitalia. After a number of tweets about the product went viral, even Aldi’s marketing team itself admits they can’t deny the likeness.
According to The Street, the German grocery chain has nearly 1,000 stores in the UK, making it the country’s fourth largest. Aldi’s nearly 10,000 locations across 20 countries are incredibly popular, even gaining a lot of traction in the saturated U.S. grocery market. What sets Aldi apart is its reliance on private label products, with as much as 77 percent of its sales coming from its own private labels rather than national labels, allowing Aldi to sell for less than its competitors.
Though Aldi’s phallic marshmallows have caught eyes across the UK, most people see it more as a harmless mishap than a malicious and inappropriate move on the part of the company. Some people are even purchasing them specifically for their unfortunate shape, joking that they’d be perfect for a spring bachelorette party. Some parents are upset by the inappropriate shape, but Aldi doesn’t expect the unfortunate mistake to have any real effect on their sales; rather, the chain might expect to see a spike in sales and visits as people who were unfamiliar with the grocery chain gain awareness and visit a nearby location.
This isn’t the first time that Aldi has made social media headlines; the grocery chain has had several successful social media campaigns, but one wasn’t so successful and hurt their business and consumer base for months. In January 2020, the chain promoted a challenge on social media called #AldiPoorestDayChallenge, where UK fashionista Natalie Lee fed her family of four on just $32 a day, with groceries for Aldi, of course. Many of Aldi’s loyal supporters found the campaign to be inappropriate and tone-deaf in the wake of the economic struggles of many of Aldi’s shoppers.
The challenge, which took place over seven days, felt to many like a wealthy person’s vacation into the realities of struggling financially—without actually having to deal with the repercussions of that struggle at all. On Aldi’s part, it was a significant misstep considering its primary consumer base is shoppers who need and value their low prices. Aldi has since switched marketing tactics to better connect to and serve their shoppers.
Despite their social media faux-pas, Aldi remains a beloved staple of grocery shopping in the UK and abroad; you can buy everything from Aldi coin holders for your keychain to reusable Aldi grocery bags. Plenty of blogs and social media accounts post frequent reviews of store products, sharing their love for the German grocery chain with followers near and far. More likely than not, the phallic-shaped marshmallows will fall into the annals of social media history as a funny and unfortunate mistake.
