U.S. candy bars in Canada!
I bought those three Hershey candy bars in my local Rossy store (Roberval QC) this afternoon, after gazing at them in the middle of the store for like ten minutes or so, completely baffled and flabbergasted at what I had in my hands, saying to myself “This is unreal”, “This is impossible” and “This can’t be” over and over again:
Now before you begin thinking I need some very strong Prozac, Valium or something, take a closer look at the reverse side of those candy bars:
See what’s wrong? See why I’m so obsessed by those candy bars?
No?
OK then, I’m going to tell you.
1. If you scroll back up to the first two pictures of the three Hershey candy bars, you can see that there is NO FRENCH WRITING on the labels. If you want to sell something in the “bilingual” country that is Canada, this is a definite no-no. For you Americans, in case you didn’t know, every product sold in “The Great White North” HAS to have writing on the labels/stickers/packaging BOTH in English and French. By law. Now Hershey, which is a very respectable company in my opinion, is very aware of that law and they do abide by it, as demonstrated by the packaging of their other candy bars sold across Canada, and intended for the Canadian market.
2. Look at the Net Weight of one of the candy bars:
The packaging gives predominance to the U.S. measuring system, (1.55 ounces - OZ) instead of the metric one used in Canada, shown in parenthesis (43 g - grams).
3. As if it weren’t obvious enough now that those candy bars were intended to be sold on the U.S. market, if you look closely at the reverse side of the candy bars (pictured above), it says “Mfd. by Hershey Foods Corporation, Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033-0815, U.S.A. Canadian-sold candy bars ALWAYS bear the location of the Canadian corporate headquarters of the company, even if the parent company is an American company. Hershey is no exception.
4. Finally, the American English spelling/grammar (as used on this blog) is used on the packaging instead of the Canadian one. Noted examples in the list of ingredients are the words “Flavoring” and “Flavor”, which are exempt from the additional Us we see in the Canadian and British English grammar.
Now I don’t know how it happened, but I really can’t figure out how U.S.-market candy found its way to my local Rossy store, in Roberval QC, hundreds of miles from the closest U.S. border. It’s really U.S.-market-intended candy, because I’ve bought a bundle of Hershey’s “Milk Chocolate” while I was in New York State last summer and brought it back home. I remember that it’s the exact same packaging. Weird, too weird!
And if they came from the U.S., they certainly didn’t cost much: $0.59 a piece. Total: $2.03. Not bad for U.S.-imported candy…
And yes, if that’s all you wanna know, they really tasted good.
(From Montrose, in the Hudson River Valley, NY USA)
I certainly hope your investigative scoop doesn’t get your poor local candy store operator in trouble. Somebody somewhere is probably avoiding some kind of tax.
By the way (and completely tangentially), years ago I visited Hershey CANADA in Smith Falls Ont and had a great time. A lot nicer than the artificial theme park the now have in Pennsylvania.
Comment by eric cosentino — February 24, 2006 @ 9:25 am
Hey Eric, thanks for your comment.
It’s kind of strange to read the words “investigative scoop” in your comment though. I merely posted on my blog what I thought was weird to see in a store right here in Roberval QC. And IT IS weird.
It’s highly unlikely that the store or authorities will ever be aware of what’s going on with Rossy’s candy bars because they’d read it here. Not a lot of people in Roberval know about my blog. You seem to forget that almost nobody speaks/reads English here in Northern Québec, and my so-called “investigation” was written in English. By the way, Rossy is a Canadian national chain of department stores, and not an independentally-operated local store. So they can very well defend themselves in court if something bad came up. But I don’t think they are saving on taxes or anything… I just think that they did not pay attention at what they ordered.
And I don’t want them to stop selling them, at $0.59 a piece, I will definitely go back and buy more!
Comment by Xavier R. Dubé — February 24, 2006 @ 11:16 am