What should have been a peaceful Saturday morning collecting Easter eggs quickly turned into a mess as parent stormed fields.
Every year, Pez candy sponsors an Easter egg hunt in Orange, Connecticut. After this year’s event turned to chaos, Pez may want to rethink next year.
There were 9,000 eggs planted around 3 different fields. Children were set to go egg hunting in shifts based around the age of the children. But, while the kids were waiting patiently, their parents stormed the fields. The adults began grabbing eggs while shoving each other and knocking down other kids.
It was such a mess that Pez was forced to issue a statement apologizing for the event:
This was our 3rd year of hosting an free egg hunt event . Based on the previous 2 years, we had an idea as to what we could expect based on previous activities. We boosted our numbers and planned for an even larger crowd this year.
Unfortunately the number of families that came out to participate far exceeded anything we could have possibly planned for. We had over 9,000 eggs on 3 separate fields. Each field was to be organized by age group with a staggered start; 10:30 for ages up to 4 years old, 10:45 for ages 5-8 and 11:00am for ages 9-12.
Unfortunately people chose to enter the first field prior to anyone from PEZ staff starting the activity. The crowd moved to the 2nd field, waited for only a couple of minutes and proceeded to rush the field without being directed to do so and before the posted start time. The crowd then immediately moved to the 3rd field and took over and removed everything well before the activity was to even start.
The general manager and other staff Visitor Center staff members were on hand trying to talk with as many people as we possibly could, letting them know if someone didn’t get an egg or candy, we had plenty of candy at the front entry for them. We sincerely tried our best to create a fun, free activity for everyone to enjoy.
We made efforts to get everyone something before they left and passed out tons of candy and coupons and the front entry and tried to make the best of an unfortunate situation. Due to the actions of a few, the good intent quickly turned into a mess. I would like to sincerely apologize to each of our guests, this was not something created to frustrate or make people angry. We only wanted to do good for the local community.
The good news is that there weren’t any serious injuries reported and no one was arrested.
