Intermarché supermarkets offered a 70% discount on Nutella, bringing the price down from €4.50 (£3.90) to €1.40.
But police were called when people began fighting and pushing one another.
"They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand," one customer told French media.
First, incidents like this really make me wonder about the model of the rational consumer. For about $12-$24 bucks if you grab an armload, you are willing to race to the store, push and shove fellow human beings, and possibly get injured.
Second, the marketing guys at Intermarche are either geniuses or idiots, I'm not sure which.
"Some customers came the night before the promotions to stash the Nutella pots in other places, and thus prevent others from taking them," Jean-Marie Daragon from the Intermarché in Montbrison, central France.
Seriously? I mean, I like Nutella also, but damn.
Reading some of the French reaction, I came across someone making the argument that it was because the French worker is in such a precarious position that they are fighting to afford Nutella.
