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'Help me I'm trapped in a factory' messages keep being found on bottles of vitamin water

Customers are contacting the manufacturer in droves asking if they should be concerned

Christopher Hooton
Thursday 02 July 2015 16:14 BST
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Many SoBe Lifewater customers feared for the well-being of the company's factory workers this week, after apparently desperate pleas started appearing under bottle caps.

The messages were stamped in the font usually reserved for 'best before' dates on packaging, leading people to think an employee had gone rogue on the production line.

Confusion flooded the Facebook page for SoBe, which is owned by PepsiCo.

Fortunately this turned out not to be a case of some poor worker facing a horrific death like that of April's tuna factory worker, but branding gone wrong.

SoBe apparently prints messages underneath its lids all the time:

This was under my SoBe cap. I drive people crazy saying this all the time. #thatswhatshesaid

Posted by Gina Crash on Wednesday, June 10, 2015

While this latest one was thankfully more inventive than the one above, it was a little insensitive given the vast forced labour problem that exists around the world.

Eventually, SoBe realised this and started posting the following apology beneath a load of the pictures, confirming that it would be changing the hidden message ASAP.

"Hi there, we’re sorry that our cap slogan caused you concern, that was certainly not our intention. These sayings are intended to give our consumers a little smile or pause for thought, not offense, while they enjoy their favorite SoBe beverage," it wrote.

"We are planning on removing this cap slogan from our current rotation, however, it will take a while for existing stock to run through the market."

(via BuzzFeed)

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