New York Stores and Soda Companies Caught Lying to Customers

New York grocery stores and soda companies have been fooling us for years, so why am I just finding out about it now?

Is there something you thought was true your whole life and eventually realized was a complete sham? I recently experienced that feeling of disappointment and sadness after a visit to the grocery store.

Grocery Stores and Soda Companies Have Been Playing Us For Fools

If you’ve ever visited a grocery store before a major holiday or event you’ve probably seen one of those impressive soda can displays. You know the ones I’m talking about, where all the boxes of soda are stacked in a pattern to make a picture like a Christmas tree, an American flag or a football goalpost.

These displays can get quite elaborate, reaching to the ceiling with hundreds of cases of soda meticulously placed in just the right way to create a breathtaking image.

But what if I told you it was all a lie?

We Have Been Lied to All of These Years

During a recent visit to the grocery store, I noticed one of these soda displays near the front door. Boxes of Pepsi products were stacked on top of each other to create a huge American flag for the Fourth of July. As I looked at the display, I noticed that something appeared to be a little off. As I got closer, my curiosity got the best of me so I touched one of the bottom boxes of soda. What happened next was completely unexpected.

The entire display moved.

That’s right, it turns out that these are not actual boxes of soda, but a pre-arranged series of empty cardboard boxes taped together to fool customers into thinking it was an impressively stacked piece of art.

After doing some more research on the subject, I found a very disturbing Reddit thread with images of similar displays after they were taken down from the store. It was revealed that many of these box sculptures aren’t even made from individual soda boxes. Instead, they are just one huge cardboard box printed with pictures of smaller boxes on them to make it appear that they’ve been painstakingly stacked on top of each other.

Have These Boxes Always Been a Lie?

These soda box displays haven’t always been a complete sham. It turns out that back in the day, they were actually made from real boxes filled with soda cans. We found an old time-lapse video from Coca-Cola that shows two workers spending three hours stacking over 1,000 12-packs to make a football display in Atlanta.

But just like everything else these days, manpower and creativity have been replaced with cost-saving shortcuts. It’s very rare to see a real soda can display anymore unless it’s being filmed for some sort of social media campaign.

Some soda workers claim the changes were due to safety concerns over these heavy displays falling on top of customers. Other industry insiders say that the change was solely made to save money on manpower and reduce unusable inventory. Whatever the reason, it makes me sad to know I live in a world where these joyful pieces of soda can art are a lie.

So, the next time you see one of these big displays in the grocery store make sure to take a very good look at it. You might not be as impressed after you realize that it’s a total sham.