Pinkberry Manages to Offend Customers with Mandarin Juicer

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[Credit: The Dizzies]

Pinkberry customers are up in arms about Asian stereotypes among the Alessi housewares carried by the fro-yo chain. Of particular offense are the Mandarin Juicers, which the Drop the Juicer! Campaign describes as "essentially three-dimensional caricatures of Chinese 'coolies' or laborers who emigrated to the United States well over a century ago." (To use the juicer, you impale your grapefruit or orange on the little man's pointy straw hat.)

Chai Park and Jin Hee Lee began their campaign after seeing the juicer at the Koreatown Pinkberry. They point out that Pinkberry "is owned by two Korean-Americans who seem more concerned about making money than their perhaps inadvertent promotion of this demeaning representation of Asian people." When they complained to the owners, one told them that "no one" is offended by the product. Interestingly, the Koreatown shop no longer carries the product, though it's still on the shelves in other Pinkberries around the city.
·Drop the Juicer [Campaign Website]
·(Don't) keep coolie! [The Dizzies]
·Mandariin, Citrus-Squeezer with Goblet [Alessi]