Ich möchte Kaffee mit Sahne und Zucker – I would like Coffee with cream and sugar. Oops. In one retailer in Switzerland, one could get their creamer with a murderous tyrant: Hitler or Mussolini.
For years, Migros has been selling disposable cups of coffee creamer with collectible images on their peel-off tops. They are quite popular and pleasant, with images of pastoral scenes many times. A recent series of images were based on old cigar bands. OOPS. Two of the recent cigar bands had images of the two genocidal dictators. Migros was alerted to the images before they put the creamers on their supermarket shelves, but about 2000 (1,200 of each image) made it to a variety of Swiss coffee shops.
Let me ethnically cleanse your coffee
Oh, well in that case, it makes it okay.
He added, “Maybe we didn’t pay enough attention to the Hitler thing.”
This comes just weeks after another Migros PR accident. Their roasting butter was labeled in Italian as Italian as ‘Butter to roast Swiss’ (Burro per arrostire svizzeri).
Peter Waelchli, managing director of Karo Versand, said that the media is making a big deal out of this, since the creamer’s are tiny. “Of course it was bad, what happened under Hitler, but you cannot ignore this part of history,” he noted with regard to WWII and the deaths of 70 million people, He added, “I have no problem with the images, but I can understand it concerns certain people.”
And that is why many of the Swiss and some creamers are neutral.
