Aldi reignites Cuthbert and Colin war – but this time it’s for charity

Aldi has reignited its Twitter campaign to protect Cuthbert against the litigious Colin the Caterpillar cake, made by Marks & Spencer.

But this time, posting on Twitter, the supermarket said it was bringing back a limited edition of the cake and wanted to donate profits from its sales to cancer charities. The company has started a hashtag with this in mind - #caterpillarsforcancer.

It comes after Aldi launched the #FreeCuthbert hashtag on Friday, and used it to post a series of hilarious and mocking memes, after Marks & Spencer begun legal action against the budget supermarket.

M&S argue that Aldi is taking its intellectual property by making a similar cake and want them to remove it from the market.

But today, Aldi has taken a different approach and is asking other supermarkets that produce caterpillar cakes – including Tesco and Waitrose – to join them in raising money for charity.

Read more:

• Keir Starmer has perfect response after a confrontation with pub landlord spreading misinformation
• Video of shelter dog reacting to being adopted is 12 seconds of pure joy
• 38 of the funniest memes about the widely criticised European Super League
• A complete timeline of Lizzo’s drunken DM drama with Chris Evans
• The biggest coffee buying mistake that most people are making

The more serious note hasn’t stopped Aldi posting funny memes, however, and Aldi clearly still has a lot of those up their sleeves/cocoons:

Meanwhile, people on Twitter have appeared to support the charitable drive, with one person saying:

And another saying the PR stunt should be in marketing textbooks:

Charity Teenage Cancer Trust has also signalled their approval:

And today, after days of silence, M&S finally responded to the Twitter baiting, to post a joke of its own:

As for their case, Gary Assim, an intellectual property specialist at law firm Shoosmiths, told the BBC: “Aldi is known to sail close to the wind on creating products which look and/or sound incredibly similar to other brands.

“M&S may find their case against Aldi difficult, since there are other caterpillar cakes on the market. They should have taken a zero-tolerance approach from the start if they felt that Colin and Connie were so important to them.”

Cuthbert 1, Colin 0.