this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Facepalm

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[–] [email protected] 176 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

If not drink, why drink shaped?

(seriously, what even is it?)

[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"baking soda"

I'm even more confused now

[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It said with baking soda. Baking soda can do a lot for cleaning.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Its just funny and a bit concerning that nowhere on the label does it explicitly say that it's a cleaning product. I wonder if there is a version without baking soda, that would be even more confusing.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

... oooh I just noticed the floor tiles on the label, under all the food.

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[–] [email protected] 140 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

I don't know this brand and ngl if I saw that on a kitchen table there is a pretty good chance I'd drink it too. That is downright irresponsible label design.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 2 weeks ago

To be fair, it does look tasty as fuck.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Packaging is definitely cultural as anyone who’s spent any significant time in a different culture knows.

It even misleads within your own culture, like how 80% of the “Ice Cream” packaged in ice cream cartons is actually “Frozen Dairy Dessert”.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah that “ice cream” is a bit different from this fabuloso situation.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

Japan has some pretty strict laws on labeling, the real fruit picture coupled with the word soda would definitely make them think this is a high quality fizzy fruit drink.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I once found myself in the rat poison isle of a Lawson in Tokyo a couple years ago thinking they were all tasty snacks. Wasn’t until I noticed the tiny little icon in the corner I figured out it wasn’t junk food I was looking at. Packaging design is very cultural, and being less than fluent in a foreign place can have some wild outcomes if you’re not careful…

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago (2 children)

never mind that, why would you have baking soda in bottles????

It's a tiny package of white powder. What is this insanity?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

It's a cleaning product with baking soda in it, not actual baking soda for cooking

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm Canadian and English is my first language. If I didn't see that product in a cleaning products isle at the store, I would be very confused because it looks like a drink and while baking soda is something to clean with, it is also something to bake with. It should at very least have the words cleaner or detergent in equally large lettering on the front label.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Since when is baking soda a liquid?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean, that was my first question when I saw the product.

First it's liquid dish soap, then it's liquid laundry detergent, now liquid baking soda?! What lengths the American trucking industry will go to get customers to pay to haul water across the fucking country!

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago

Lol that shit’s straight up in a juice bottle what the fuck.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Holy shit is that three gallons of milk?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Imagine three gallons of milk. Heck, imagine four

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Even down here where Fabulosa is common, I occasionally mistake it for juice. I guess people are mortally terrified of "communist conformity" and need the soothing market comforts of 80 flavors of everything all from the same one company, but I would truly love if most products were regulated to come in standardized containers.

Imagine the benefits. You can still have whatever insane labels you want. But now all bottles are instantly identifiable by shape or silhouette. Tall, squarish, and easily pourable, must be juice. Short, round, with embedded poison symbols? Not juice!

All bottles of a type could be easily sorted, cleaned, and reused. No worries about plastic cross contamination.

Each kind of bottle is engineered by a materials science task force to be the right kind and amount of plastic to make this work long term for each purpose.

Because gov. subsidies will help manufacture the standardized bottle and everyone can use them, costs actually go down across industries. The recycling sector could also stand to grow by increased need for logistics and management of standardized waste, which becomes another cheap stream of materials for packagers.

Kids, foreign visitors, the aged or infirm, the inebriated, and others all benefit from faster, easier identification of the kind of material they are dealing with. Again, "Is this food?" is one of life's fundamental questions and what is "society" doing for anyone if it's not at least making that question easier and more reliable to answer?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

To me it seriously looks absolutely like fruit juice that has baking soda in it for some reason I'm not aware of - maybe health benefits? And if it didn't mention baking soda I would totally expect it to be fruit juice. But apparently it's a household cleaner, and there's also a watermelon version. WTF is wrong with the people who make this shit?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (5 children)

This reminds me of an old and probably somewhat racist joke, involving a person from [insert low income country here] moving to America and marveling at an American supermarket. Food is so easy to get in America, not like in the old country, and they go so far as to put pictures -- in color -- on the cans and jars showing you what's inside so you don't even have to be able to read the language.

This can has a picture of green beans on it and inside are green beans.

This can has a picture of a bowl of soup on it and inside is that very soup.

This box has a picture of a plate of cookies on it, and inside is a plastic tray with three perfect rows of those exact cookies.

This can has a picture of a baby on it and --

That person went straight back to the airport and booked a one way flight back to the old country at that very moment. All those things people in the old country told them about Americans were true.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

A few years ago, we receive an email at work to inform us someone has died after drinking from an unlabeled plastic bottle that was filled with toxic chemicals.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie, from the thumbnail I thought it was a fruity drink too....

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Even when looking at the picture, I still don't know what it is. I'm assuming soap based on the comments, but it's not obvious at all.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

This is why people need consumer regulation. Bottles have one shape and soaps another

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What the fuck is a snickerdoodle

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Never had one? It’s a somewhat common cookie variety that’s similar to a sugar cookie and has a cinnamon sugar topping.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

I fully understand the exchange students' confusion. There's nothing on the label that says or indicates it's a cleaner, and that's a plausible beverage container design.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Several years ago at a restaurant in Utah someone mixed a packet of cleaning chemicals instead of lemonade powder because they looked identical. An old lady drank it and died.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I still am confused why it is called soda.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Bicarbonate of sodium is called 'baking soda'. Soft drinks are called 'soda' because the acid/baking soda reaction was used before they figured out CO2 injection. This floor cleaner is also made with baking soda, therefore, confusion.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Oh that is, I also thought that was a drink, what the fuck?

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