A viral TikTok recipe, wherein ice cream is wrapped in a Fruit Roll-Up that turns crunchy, has sparked enough demand in Israel to lead to smuggling attempts.
All in all, 1,006 pounds of the candy have been seized recently, adding up to 32,192 individual Fruit Roll-Ups in total.
The trend was sparked by TikTok user Golnar Ghavami on Feb. 25, when she posted a video of herself wrapping mango ice cream in a red Fruit Roll-Up and demonstrating how the candy wrap got cold and crunchy.
As the trend snowballed, stores in Israel ran out of legally imported boxes, leading travelers to seek out the candy in America. Whereas a box of 10 Fruit Roll-Ups costs only $3 stateside, individual units of the treat can go for as much as $8 in Israel.
On April 28, an American couple was stopped at Ben Gurion International Airport near Lod, Israel, with nearly 375 pounds of the confection, all individual units, stuffed inside their luggage.
An American couple was caught trying to smuggle 375 POUNDS of Fruit Roll Ups into the State of Israel after prices skyrocketed once the snack became part of a viral TikTok trend.
— Amy Spiro (@AmySpiro) May 1, 2023
Did you pack your bags yourselves and also are they full of exclusively candy? pic.twitter.com/GtGh76Z9n9</ a>
The same day, another couple tried sneaking in 70 pounds of the stuff, and individual passengers also got in on the action. A pair of suitcases owned by one American passenger had 72 pounds of the candy inside.
On May 1, yet another attempt was made by a single passenger, who managed to stuff 143 pounds of Fruit Roll-Ups into his luggage, according to the Israel Tax Authority.
Passenger planes have not been the only method that impromptu smugglers have tried; 10 shipments to different Israeli addresses, containing a total of 346 pounds of candied contraband, were found in the mail on May 4, according to Israeli news site Ynet.
The legal import limit for an individual entering Israel is 11 pounds of any specific food product.
The social media sensation has caused scarcity in the U.S.
“I reached out to my distributors and they said, ‘Look, dude, we haven’t seen Fruit Roll-Ups in months,’” Mitchell Cohen, owner of the Economy Candy shop in New York City’s East Village, told the New York Post.
Mr. Cohen said one customer placed an order for 10,000 boxes of Fruit Roll-Ups.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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