Thursday, September 7, 2023, 11:13
The Lidl supermarket chain has withdrawn a car product from its stores due to its resemblance to an orange soda. Specifically, it is the Robbyrob brand car paint cleaner and protector with an apricot fragrance that was sold in a one-liter format with a red cap and a transparent bottle that reveals the orange liquid inside, which could confuse the buyer. .
Last July, a Twitter user (@elyos68) shared a publication warning of the similarity of this product with that of a soft drink suitable for consumption. Facua – Consumidores en Acción echoed this tweet, remarking that “cleaning products cannot be sold with packaging designs and content colors that children could confuse with food.”
Indeed, you cannot sell cleaning products with packaging designs and content colors that children could mistake for food, @lidlespana. They must remove it immediately. https://t.co/TBKQ6ZaMsi
— FACUA (@FACUA) July 8, 2023
In addition, the organization denounced Walter Schmidt, the manufacturer of the product, last July before the General Directorate of Consumer Affairs and the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (Aesan) of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs for marketing this cleaner and protector in Spain in a format that could be misleading.
From Facua they assure that «the smell of this fruit – apricot- could also induce, especially in children, to believe that it is a drinkable product. Likewise, the main label of the product that was for sale appeared in English and German, which made it even more difficult for the consumer to know that it is an article not suitable for ingestion.
After this, the Ministry of Consumption confirmed that Lidl withdrew this product “voluntarily”. In addition, the supermarket chain has informed consumers on its website so that those who have purchased it can return it, recovering the amount paid for it.
Royal Decree 770/1999, of May 7, which approves the technical-sanitary regulations for the preparation, circulation and trade of detergents and cleaners, states in point 4 of its article 8 that “products that have a shape, smell, colour, appearance, presentation, labeling, volume or size, such that it is foreseeable that consumers, particularly children, will confuse them with food products and therefore put them in their mouths , suck or ingest them.
In the same way, article 35 of Regulation (EC) No. 1272/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 16, 2008 on the classification, labeling and packaging of substances and mixtures establishes that «containers containing a dangerous substance or mixture supplied to the general public shall not be shaped or designed to attract or arouse the curiosity of children, or mislead consumers, nor be similar in presentation or design to that used for food, feed, medicines or products cosmetics, which may mislead consumers’.
#Lidl #withdraws #product #cars #due #resemblance #soft #drink