Bad taste? Outrage as Swiss coffee company uses picture of Hitler’s face on novelty milk lids



A Swiss coffee company has been forced to withdraw novelty milk lids featuring the image of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler after they were spotted by German businessmen in a city centre cafe.

Lids showing the faces of Hitler and Mussolini were spotted by a group Germans while having a coffee break in a cafe in the city of Coire, in the eastern Swiss region of Graubunden.

The plastic take-away packaging showing the fascist dictators' portraits inside a gold frame were distributed by Switzerland's largest supermarket chain Migros.

In Switzerland, labels from the mini-cream containers are collectibles, and producers often seek new and inventive ways to enhance their appeal.

Tristan Cerf, a spokesman for Migros, said the mishap had occurred when an outside company asked ELSA, a dairy manufacturer and Migros subsidiary, to supply a series of 55 coffee cream containers based on vintage cigar labels, two of which featured the dictators.

He said that the outside company had provided the controversial designs, and that ELSA typically produced plastic creamers with charming and innocuous images on them - not fascists.

He said: 'I can't tell you how these labels got past our controls. Usually the labels have pleasant images like trains, landscapes and dogs - nothing polemic that can pose a problem.'

Cerf emphasised that the accidental circulation of the plastic Hitler creamers had nothing to do with the country's social mores, but rather reflected an isolated mistake.

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