Anyone who buys Dubai chocolate is a consumer victim (opinion)

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Have you tried them yet? That chocolate with the green filling everyone is talking about. The Dubai chocolate? No? Good this way! Because anyone who pays just under 15 euros for 150 grams of it is a consumer victim – and a useful idiot of an autocracy.

The chocolate manufacturer Lindt has recently started offering Dubai chocolate for this price. At just under 100 euros, a kilo costs as much as gourmet meat – and that cannot be justified.

Customers still lined up in front of the Lindt shops in German city centers. But why do people line up in front of the shops as if something was available for free? You’ve fallen for one of the world’s oldest marketing tricks: artificial scarcity.

A manufacturer limits the available quantity of a product in order to increase its exclusivity. Lindt, for example, says it only sells 100 bars per day and shop. Consumers respond to this: anything that is scarce and expensive must be of high quality and desirable.

The mass hysteria surrounding Dubai chocolate began in December 2023. On Tiktok, the influencer Maria Vehera tasted a chocolate bar from the Dubai company “Fix Dessert Chocolatier”, filled with pistachio cream and the Arabic dessert knafeh.

Based on this, the product is called “Can’t Get Knafeh of it”, a play on words that roughly means “I can’t get enough of it” in German. It only gets the name “Dubai chocolate” through social media, where a hype arises about the confectionery.

Now the fascination with the fake luxury good has reached Germany. Companies like Lindt want to use the hype for their own benefit. They copy the recipe and produce the popular chocolate themselves. And here too, buyers are behaving as hoped: they are knocking down the doors of Lindt and Co., even buying cheap versions of the chocolate by the dozen from discounters. The main thing is that it says “Dubai” on it. One of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a state ranked 152nd out of 165th in the “Personal Freedom” category according to the 2021 Human Freedom Index.

Anyone who buys Dubai chocolate is not just a consumer victim. He or she also celebrates a product that is advertised as coming from one of the world’s worst autocracies. Where the death penalty for male homosexuality is in the law, where migrant workers are humiliated, imprisoned and physically abused according to Human Rights Watch, where men are legally allowed to control their wives through physical violence.

Sure: it just says “Dubai” on the packaging. For example, anyone who buys Lindt’s product does not support the UAE financially. But: Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, should be happy that his principality is on everyone’s lips. Strategically improving the image of the UAE is a matter of state. “Fix Dessert Chocolatier” also plans to soon develop an exclusive variety in cooperation with the Maktum ruling family.

And: Rewe actually has Dubai chocolate that is made in the United Arab Emirates. The 200 gram bar from the Orient Delight brand, which is at least locally close to the original, costs 8.99 euros. So the same thing applies here: stay away!