I just opened a new pack of Orbitz Cinnamint gum. I unwrapped the first piece and saw that it was pink, as expected. However when I began chewing it, I realized the flavor was actually spearmint and not my beloved cinnamon. I spit that one out and tried another piece. Still pink, but still spearmint. I promptly told some coworkers, in case they find me hunched over my desk in my office. So far, the production error seems to be benign.
I was making cookies this week and grabbed a bag of dried fruit labeled “DRIED CRANBERRIES.” I opened the bag and thought to myself, there is no way those are cranberries-- they are definitely dried blueberries.
Honestly I don’t care one way or the other but I can see how a mis-labeling of that magnitude could potentially cause problems!
I bought some store-brand mac & cheese once, but the “cheese” packet was some kind of beef broth flavoring. Brown instead of orange, and definitely not cheese.
About 25 or so years ago I bought a box of Twinings individually wrapped tea bags, and about half the sachets didn’t have the tea bags inside. I wrote them a nice letter, and included some of the sealed tea bagless paper pouches - they sent back a bunch of coupons and one of the wooden chest assortments
Not a food item but I once bought a DVD copy of the movie I Was a Male War Bride. It had the right label and everything on the disc. But when I played it, the actual contents of the disc were several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Dean’s French Onion Dip. It was plain sour cream (or something much like it.) I took it back to the store and exchanged it, and foolishly didn’t check the one I took. Must have come from the same run, because it too was lacking any flavoring. I decided the food gods were telling me not to be a lazy cook, so I made my own dip with it instead of going to the store a third time!
I always subscribed to the somewhat fanciful notion that when Lucky Charms mixed up the colors of their marshmallow bits it was actually a production mistake and that the marketing department cleverly came up with the campaign to avoid scrapping all of those mis-colored marshmallows.
I once came across a completely sealed but empty bottle of soda in a twelve pack. I suppose it’s possible it leaked out through some pin hole after packaging but there was no evidence of any leak that I can recall.
Two separate times I bought Mahatma’s Red Beans and Rice and there were beans and rice in the packet but no seasonings at all and the stuff was painfully bland. I also once bought a can of vienna sausages (for my son not me. Really!) that was one wiener short and one of the other wieners was deformed. I have bought six packs of soda more than once and got one can that was empty.
Many years ago, I worked in a supermarket. I was stocking pickles and found a jar full of pickles with added flavoring. There was also a big bolt with a nut still attached. I assume the production line stopped shortly after the bolt went into the jar.
I bought a can of green beans once that contained 4 - count 'em 4 - green beans! I wrote to the company to complain and got a handful of coupons back. I also had a carton of ice cream once that had a big air bubble in the middle, so I was shorted by about a third - more coupons for that one.
A few months ago I bought a bag of coffee beans. First of all, when I opened it, it turned out to be ground instead of whole beans. I started using it anyway, but noticed that it was leaking some grounds through a tiny hole in the bottom of the bag. Ok, so I put a piece of tape over the hole. Then . . . as I used the coffee down to about half of the bag, I started noticing some white granular substance mixed in with the coffee. The lower I got, the more substance. I put a small amount on the tip of my little finger and tasted it. No taste whatsoever.
I’m thinking that perhaps this is some sort of drug that someone injected through that little hole in the bottom of the bag. I’ve saved the bag and what’s left of the contents, just in case my curiosity gets the best of me someday, and I turn it over to “the authorities.”
I work the grocery/freight department at a very large grocery store. You’d be surprised how many boxes we have to throw out/send back because they’re already torn when we open the case, the box is misprinted, or it’s a perfectly sealed container which is completely empty.
Also, I once found a mummified frog in the bottom of a case of bananas.
That happens somewhat often. Not so often that the regular consumer is going to notice, but I probably ‘handle’ maybe a hundred cans a day and see that once a month or so. If you squeeze it, at least half the time there’s usually a really small hole somewhere. OTOH, twice now, I’ve found a bottle of (glass) snapple with flat side.
We’ve bought several boxes of Velveeta Shells & Cheese that contained a mismatched assortment of packages of shells & cheese sauce…always one less sauce packet than shells packet.
Also recently bought a case of Pepsi Max that had a can of Mountain Dew in with all the Pepsi Maxes.