If your Pepero smells funny, put it down and read this

By Brian Han

If your box of Pepero smells funny, put it down now. Lotte Confectionary, the South Korean company that’s been grabbing the headlines lately with family feud, has issued a recall on two of its products due to a mishap on the assembly line.

The beloved snacks come with a printed wrapping material which needs to dry before the product is put together. But between June and October, the white chocolate cookie sticks and Ghana almond chocolate bars were allegedly wrapped with packaging that still had wet ink. As a result, the food absorbed some of the potentially harmful ink and gave off a distinct odor as well.

Consumers described the smell as something similar to rubber.

Authorities believe that approximately 290,000 boxes of Pepero (worth over $5 million) were possibly affected, while 50,000 have already been pulled from the shelves.

The Busan Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation with the hopes of figuring out how this happened so that it can find the best way to prevent public consumption of the affected products.