Mike and Ike Class Action Says Candy Boxes Are Half Empty

Just Born Inc. faces a class action lawsuit over claims that it misleads, shortchanges, and deceptively misrepresents the amount of candy contained in each box of Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales.

Plaintiff Stephanie Escobar of Los Angeles alleges that the candy maker uniformly under-fills the boxes by 46 percent. Each box is filled with only 54 percent of candy while the remaining 46 percent serves no lawful function or legitimate purpose, the lawsuit states.

In 2016, the plaintiff says she made a one-time purchase of Mike and Ike candies at a Cinemark in Los Angeles. However, after having discovered that the candy is deceptively packaged with too much empty space in the box, Escobar says that she would have never purchased the product.

This class actions lawsuit alleges that Just Born Inc. markets their packages to seem significantly bigger than the amount of candy inside them. The plaintiff’s argument and contention is that the slack-fill, the difference between the amount of product contained and the actual capacity of the container, serves no lawful or legitimate purpose. In fact, Escobar claims that the greater the slack-fill in this case, the more likely the contents are to sustain damage, break, and move around during shipping and handling.

Escobar cites research published in Consumer Reports that says the typical consumer spends roughly 13 seconds making a product buying decision and moreover, that the products packaging and size heavily effects that decision. The research states that, “… Faced with a large box and a smaller box with the same amount of product inside… consumers are apt to choose the larger box because they think it’s a better value.”

Escobar argues that she and other consumers similarly situated did just that. They made their purchasing decision based on the product’s visual representation and reasonably relied on that representation to determine the quantity of candy contained inside the box.

The Mike and Ike class action claims that it’s typical for consumers and the public to base purchasing decisions not on any label information, such as serving disclosures or net weight, but on the dimensions of a product’s packaging. Just Born fraudulently deceived the plaintiff by misrepresenting the products as having quantities that they do not have, replacing them instead with nonfunctional slack–fill, the plaintiff states.

Escobar says that she, and putative Class Members, have suffered monetary injuries in purchasing Hot Tamales and Mike and Ike because they purchased an amount of candy product that was never received. The plaintiff files this class action complaint and brings this cause to action in pursuant to Business and Professions Code Sections 17500 and in violation of California’s False Advertising Law.

The plaintiff seeks to represent a Class consisting of “All persons who purchased the Products in the United States for personal use and not for resale during the time period February 3, 2013, through the present.”

This is not the only pending litigation Just Born is facing. In February, the candy maker was hit with a similar class action from a Missouri man who alleges both Hot Tamales and Mike and Ike candy boxes contain too much slack-fill. 

Escobar is represented by Ryan Clarkson, Shireen Clarkson, and Shalini Dogra of the Clarkson Law Firm PC.

The Mike and Ike Slack-Fill Class Action Lawsuit is Stephanie Escobar v. Just Born Inc., Case 2:17-cv-01826, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. 

UPDATE: August 2020, the Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.