You wipe the sleep from your eyes, take a big stretch, pour your cup of coffee and you see the face of Hitler. Sounds like a horrible morning.
Mini single-serve cream containers are collectibles in Switzerland, with whimsical and charming images that producers try to vary to keep customers entertained. Animals, cartoons, celebrities or landscapes are the typical images depicted, but one morning, a customer at a Swiss train station saw Hitler's visage on his creamer label and sent a picture of it to a newspaper, according to The New York Times.
Migros, the Swiss retailer, apologized on Wednesday and withdrew about 2,000 creamers from about 100 cafes in the German-speaking section of Switzerland, according to The New York Times.
World War-era Italian fascist Benito Mussolini's face was also featured on some creamer lids.
Spokesperson for Migros, Tristan Cerf, said that a subsidiary of Migros called ELSA, was contacted by an outside company and asked to create a series of 55 collectible cream containers based on vintage cigar labels, according to The New York Times.
Cerf said that Karo Versand, the company that distributes the creamers, is responsible for providing the images, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
"Look at what happens every day in Syria. People are beheaded and nobody cares," Karo CEO, Peter Waelchli, told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. Waelchli doesn't see what the big deal is and thought that releasing the image of Hitler was "unproblematic," according to Reuters.
After the requested order was filled, Migros made 2,400 containers for itself and distributed them to restaurants and cafes, according to The New York Times.
"I can't tell you how these labels got past our controls," Cerf said, according to The New York Times. "Usually the labels have pleasant images like trains, landscapes and dogs - nothing polemic that can pose a problem."
"Whoever made this mistake was not thinking properly, as these aren't images accompanying a book about World War II, but rather something meant to be enjoyed with coffee and a chocolate cake," said Cerf, according to The New York Times.
"You cannot put Pol Pot or a terrorist on a milk creamer," Cerf added. "It is unacceptable."
