A 'shameful' Aldi shopper has been slammed for their attempt to stockpile the widely popular Prime Hydration drink which has seen desperate adults pushing over children at shops. Adults pushed and shoved kids as young as seven as they rushed to grab a bottle of the drink, created by Youtube stars Logan Paul and KSI, with chaos unfolding at several stores across the UK.
The pair have used their enormous social media clout to create huge demand for the beverage, which contains coconut water, sweeteners and vitamins. In Nottinghamshire, the launch of the drink at Aldi stores seemed relatively calm despite a 'carnage' queue but elsewhere in the country has seen wilder scenes.
Such is the craze around the drink that one shopper took to a Facebook group to explain how an Aldi customer had attempted to open several Prime bottles in the hope he'd be able to buy them all - avoiding the one per person limit. The shopper thought his 'trick' would mean staff would allow him to buy all of the opened bottles, but instead they banned him from buying any at all from the London store, as reported by Manchester Evening News.
The shopper said: "To the man in Aldi this morning that thought it would be a good idea to load his basket with Prime drink and open them all thinking they would sell them to you as you’d opened them. Shame on you. Swearing and abusing the staff as there was a limit of one of each flavour per customer.
"Well done to the staff at Aldi for taking them off of him and not allowing him to buy them. Because of your greed some kids missed out.”
Punters have been flogging bottles of Prime energy drink for over quadruple their value – a day after chaotic videos showed people scrambling to get their hands on a bottle. The viral beverage, costing just £1.99, was being sold online for £8 as of Friday, December 30.
And it seems those who missed out are now ready to pay a nearly 400 per cent premium to taste it, with ten bottles of Prime selling for £75 on Facebook Marketplace. Student Kristina Sheppard, 19, captured a brief video from her local store in East London on Thursday, December 29, as customers battled it out to get their hands on the limited edition drink.
The PE and Sports Exercise Science student said: "I got there at around 7.45am and I took the video at 8.04am. "It was just hectic. I didn't push anyone, but there was a lot of pushing and shoving going on.
"I thought there was a limit of one bottle per flavour, but I saw people getting cases of them. There were parents pushing children. There were kids between the ages of 7 and 14, they were being pushed out of the way.
"One of the staff was shouting 'parents, stop pushing the kids'. It was absolute carnage. I just got my bottles and left, I didn't want to stick around much longer."
Advertised as a 'hydration drink', Prime contains mostly water added with vitamins and minerals and has few calories with no added sugar. It is also made up of coconut water but does not have any caffeine in it.
Some writing on social media labelled the drink a “fad” and asked why people were willing to pay a high price for it during the cost of living crisis.
One said: “What I can’t understand with this whole fad is that there are people willing to pay such an overinflated price for a bottle of juice.
“The disgrace of it all is that people are struggling to eat, heat and pay bills. What kind of world are we living in?”
Another added: “Prime has to be one of the worst things to ever hit this country." But many others were not put off as stores across the country saw long queues yesterday after it was announced they would be stocking the drink.
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