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Cocaine. Foreign currency. Firearms. All the contraband that customs officers are trained to catch.
But hundreds of pounds of fruit Roll-Ups?
Welcome to the age of TikTok-influenced smuggling.
Thanks to recipes circulating on social media platforms, Fruit Roll-Ups – American-made fruit peel snacks served to children at baseball games and slumber parties since the 1980s – have become an obsession in Israel, where shortages mean smuggling in the snack is possible Highly profitable.
But the Israeli government destroyed it. The Israel Tax Authority revealed the scheme in a statement on social media last week, saying inspectors and an undercover unit at Ben Gurion Airport had caught several people, including Americans, trying to bring large quantities of snacks into the country.
The agency has confiscated hundreds of kilograms of fruit Roll-Ups, he said – 661 pounds in one week alone. Because one Roll-Up weighs 0.5 ounces, that makes tens of thousands of individual packages.
The reason for everything? People want ice cream with a crunch, and they’re willing to pay for it.
The trend started earlier this year when Golnar Ghavami, an influencer who goes by @golisdream on TikTok, posted a video of himself wrapping mango ice cream in a Fruit Roll-Up, thinking he was just showing “the wrong kind of fun”.
He points out that the Fruit Roll-Up freezes right around the ice cream and creates a hand-friendly dessert that offers a surprising and satisfying crunch. The original video of Ms. Ghavami now has more than 14 million views, and TikTok has been flooded with videos of people trying it out – including some from the official Fruit Roll-Ups account, whose social media manager seemed to enjoy the success of the night.
But the frenzy in Israel left stores in Tel Aviv completely sold out of Fruit Roll-Ups, according to local news reports. When they can get their hands on it, retailers across the country are starting to sell individually wrapped Fruit Roll-Ups — which are usually sold in boxes containing several snacks — for as much as $8 each, the Tax Authority said, even with boxes. of 10 fruit Roll-Ups in the United States average around $3.
The lack of a market attracted the attention of entrepreneurs in America.
At the end of April, the agency said, a couple of Americans were caught, each carrying a suitcase filled with more than 185 kilograms of fruit Roll-Ups, part of the haul of nearly 375 kilograms. The Tax Authority also shared a video of the unusual discovery, which showed customs officials sifting through several suitcases filled with hundreds of small silver and red foil packets.
That far exceeds the legal import limit for individuals entering Israel, which is about 11 kilograms of certain food products.
The man’s voice in the video can be heard answering why he filled two checked bags with fruit Roll-Ups. “It has something to do with ice cream,” he said, according to The Times of Israel.
More recently, another couple was caught with around 70 kilograms of fruit Roll-Ups, according to the agency. Two single passengers were also caught arriving from the United States in large quantities: one with almost 73 kilograms of snacks in his suitcase and the other traveling with more than 143 kilograms.
Last week, the Israeli Ministry of Health stood up and issued a warning against the writ of large Roll-Ups.
Agency, the statement on Twitter, called insanity and “crazy” smuggling attempts. The confections, the ministry said, may be photogenic and trendy, but they are also full of unhealthy sugar and oil.
However, there is an alternative: cucumber rolls.
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