Kamal Ghorui
Amazon, Microsoft, and other American tech firms have also joined in on the wave of online responses to the theft of 12 tonnes of KitKat bars in Europe. The companies have posted “(un)official statements” that are humorous but also serve to distance them from the theft while promoting their products. The trend began with Nestle’s confirmation of the theft and the posting of an official, light-hearted statement.“We can confirm that 12T of KitKat products were stolen while in transit between our factory in Central Italy and their destination in Poland,” the FMCG brand said, adding that there would be no shortage of the chocolate during Easter. Nestle also stated that unique batch codes can trace the stolen products, enabling their identification if they enter unofficial sales channels.The theft, involving more than 413,000 bars, has since gone viral online. Nestle added to the tone, stating, “We’ve always encouraged people to have a break with KitKat. But it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 tons of our chocolate.”
Microsoft, Amazon and others react to 12 tons of KitKat bars stolen in Europe
US companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, McAfee, DoorDash and World of Warcraft maker Blizzard Entertainment, issued statements clarifying their lack of involvement while referencing their offerings “on a completely unrelated note.” Commenting on the KitKat heist, Microsoft Edge’s X account shared a screenshot of an email that shows a boss asking an intern: “Hey! Quick question: why do we have 14 boxes of kit kats in the office?” Captioning the picture, the company wrote, “On an unrelated note we just got this email from the boss.”
In response to Nestle, the AWS Developers X account shared an official statement regarding the KitKat incident. The statement read: “Following recent speculation, we want to clarify that Waddles was conducting legitimate research on ‘distributed systems at scale.’ When he said he was “moving 12T of objects across regions” he was referring to 53 data migration. Probably. We cannot explain why he was wearing a fake mustache in the AWS cafeteria last Friday or why he keeps giggling when someone mentions chocolate. Our investigation has concluded. No further questions. Thank you.”
US delivery app DoorDash took a similar stance with another (un)official statement that said: “Hey guys, DoorDash here. Due to a completely random packaging error, we have 12 tons of KitKats in our DashMarts that we can’t sell. The good news: all you have to do is go to your DoorDash app and add like 500-600 KitKats to your cart and this should resolve itself quickly. Thank you.”
Meanwhile, McAfee wrote, “Our thoughts are with KitKat as they face the loss of 12 tons of chocolate. We may not know where the chocolate went, but we do know this: protecting consumers isn’t something we ever ‘take a break’ from.”
Apart from this, World of Warcraft game maker Blizzard Entertainment, which is now owned by Microsoft, shared a screenshot from the game showing an Item card labelled “12T of Kitkats”. Captioning the image, the gaming studio wrote: “This is just a coincidence, we swear…”
