The Scary Willy-Wonka Style Situation 2 M&M's Workers Fell Into
Anyone for whom the 1971 movie, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," starring Gene Wilder (via IMDb) felt more like a horror film than a family-friendly adventure may want to brace themselves. After all, the whimsical retelling of a Roald Dahl children's book was more than just a story about a boy who receives a golden ticket to famed candy baron Willy Wonka's mysterious sweet factory and ultimately changes his fortune and future forever. The film was also a cautionary tale against greed (remember Veruca Salt's untimely end?), not listening to your parents (like when Violet thought she could eat a blueberry-flavored sweet without consequence), or just generally being an annoying little punk (see: Mike TV).
But it was Augustus Gloop, the first of the unfortunate victims of the Wonka tour, that we could all probably relate to. Who could stroll alongside a river made of chocolate and not take a tiny taste? When Gloop got sucked up into that tube after he fell dangerously into Wonka's forbidden river, we all got sucked up into that tube. Sadly, two Mars Wrigley employees in Pennsylvania got to experience their own chocolate-covered nightmare at a candy factory on June 9, according to Today. And while reports indicate that the Wrigley's workers will be just fine, we'd bet that even in a world of pure imagination, they wouldn't be in a rush to stream "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" anytime soon. So what happened?
A golden ticket to the nearest hospital
On the morning of June 9, a 911 operator in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, surely thought they were being punked. According to Today, the call came in right around lunchtime: "The incident currently is being downgraded," a spokesperson for the 911 dispatch told the news outlet, "but originally, two employees were stuck in a sort of dry chocolate." That's correct: the Elizabethtown Fire Department was dispatched to the Mars M&M Factory after two workers fell into a vat of chocolate at the confectionery site and needed help getting back out. In fact, while it's unclear how the pair fell in, to begin with — and whether this vat of chocolate had a rushing river quality or more of a smooth and creamy texture — the Fire Department ended up having to cut a hole in the side of the tank in order to extricate the two employees, according to CNN.
Reuters claims that the chocolate was waist-high on the unlucky employees, but that it still took over an hour for first responders to figure out how to get them out safely. After that, Food & Wine confirmed that the "external contractors" were taken away to a hospital for precautionary evaluations, with a spokesperson for Mars Wrigley emphasizing, "We're extremely grateful for the quick work of the first responders." To which Oompa Loompas everywhere nodded, knowingly.