A Florida woman is suing The Hershey Co. over Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, a trick-or-treating staple, and other associated products.

The beef: The packaging suggests each individually wrapped candy has a jack-o’-lantern face etched on it, allowing the peanut butter filling to peek through. In reality, the pumpkins, ghosts, bats, and other Halloween treats are vaguely shaped blobs, with nary a face to be seen.

Plaintiff Cynthia Kelly is seeking $5m, which attorney Anthony Russo, who’s also involved in a false advertising lawsuit against Burger King, claims is a number meant to prove a point.

“Today, it’s a $2 item — tomorrow it’s your vehicle, the next day it’s your home,” he told NPR.

I will admit that I, too…

… was surprised by the lack of pumpkin faces (though I continue to put a big bowl of them out for my neighbors every Halloween).

A number of lawsuits are now highlighting potentially deceptive advertising in food:

• Subway has been sued multiple times for chicken that isn’t chicken, tuna that isn’t tuna, and bread that isn’t bread.
• One New York attorney has filed 400+ class-action lawsuits against food and beverage companies, alleging a little bit of everything: that some “fudge” products aren’t technically fudge, that strawberry Pop-Tarts contain too few strawberries in the filling, and that “hint of lime” Tostitos don’t use enough lime juice.

But is it as dire as Russo claims?

Well, he’s not wrong about false advertising invading the housing and vehicle markets.

In 2018, the FTC took aim at a network of subscription rental sites that were “rife with inaccurate or unavailable listings,” and last year fined Roomster over phony listings and reviews.

Last month, a group filed a complaint with the FTC against Toyota for allegedly marketing hybrid vehicles with internal combustion engines as EVs.

California’s DMV wants Tesla to stop using “Full Self-Driving” to describe its automated driving feature, which requires some driver interaction. Elon Musk claims this violates Tesla’s right to free speech.

So, if you think your money should buy what’s advertised, then sure, sue Reese’s over the missing faces. Just don’t get us started on Reese’s big-ass pumpkin that contains very little peanut butter at all.

Today’s smartphones already act as our eyes and ears, but now they’re coming for our noses, too.

Startup Mobile Physics is creating new technology to turn our phones into personal “envirometers” that can sniff out pollution, per Axios:

• The tech uses smartphone sensors and cameras to detect air quality, smoke levels, UV exposure, temperature, and more.
• Its app uses real-time notifications to warn users if hazardous levels are detected.
• It then instructs users to take actions like opening or closing a window, turning on an air purifier, or putting a mask on.
• Semiconductor companies Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics are embedding the tech into a chip for use in Android phones.

While current smartphones do show air quality levels, the data is pulled from nearby weather stations rather than a user’s exact location.

This means our phones can’t warn us of hazards in the most important place — our homes — where simple tasks like vacuuming and cooking can lead to unhealthy air quality.

This type of tech…

… would amass a wealth of data that certain companies — in insurance, government, and health sectors, for example — would likely pay top dollar for.

Mobile Physics plans to eventually roll out a subscription plan so that users can pay to access extra information, like how their exposure levels compare to users around them or historical data.

This might be of interest to at-risk groups, like those with respiratory problems, who may want to more carefully track their air quality.

Foggy future

We all saw those orange skies over the summer — air pollution is becoming a pressing environmental issue.

It’s a dangerous one: The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution causes ~7m premature deaths per year. And that comes at a cost of $8.1T in damages, according to the World Bank Group.

While smartphone tech can’t stop the smoke, it could make people more aware of the danger, and maybe even help keep us — and the planet — a little safer.

Amid the daily excitement of you coming home, dinner time, and going for a W-A-L-K, your dog may not have clocked it, but 2023 was a hard year for canines.

• Dog intake at US shelters continued its post-pandemic rise, up ~22% since 2021.
• One in 10 pet owners rehomed their dogs, and another 11% thought about it.
• And even for those with a steady home situation, the house may’ve been a lot lonelier: ~2.5m Americans returned to the office in 2023.

Fortunately, 2024 is looking up. (If every dog has its day, then why can’t it have one 365x in a row?)

The AI-led future is here for the pooches

There are a handful of tech innovations ahead aiming to improve pups’ quality of life — and, perhaps, also make owners think twice about parting ways:

• Ogmen Robotics is currently displaying ORo, its robotic dog assistant, at CES. The sensor-packed ORo can autonomously move around a home, throw a ball, and its robotic face can display videos of a pet’s owner. It’ll go on sale in April for $799.
• If you’d rather have a more static doggy au pair, we previously covered Companion, an enrichment device loaded with dog games and a precision treat launcher debuting this summer.
• Another CES hit: Minitailz, a new $99 smart collar from Invoxia with live GPS tracking and heart-health scans. Its paired app has an AI chatbot agent that creates personalized pet reports and flags cardiac irregularities.
• Japan’s One by One is developing an $8/month streaming music service for dogs, with breed-specific mixes to soothe anxious dogs.
• Dog food is also becoming increasingly tech-forward: Pet food manufacturer PawCo Foods “leverages AI to enhance nutrition and palatability” for its plant-based meat.

We’re not entirely sure what that means, but neither will your dog, so it only stands to further unify man and man’s best friend.

Perhaps you’re a cat person? Worry not; they aren’t getting ignored here — Invoxia’s Minitailz is down ~100 grams in weight from its previous smart collar model, making it workable for any tech-savvy kitties.