Plastic pastries mistakenly sold in a store

As they say… it’s no cakewalk. In Japan, representations of plastic dishes are a multi-million dollar industry. But on Saturday, fake egg tarts from Osaka-based company Andrew’s Egg Tart were sold to customers by accident. The pastries were so convincing that even the staff couldn’t tell the difference and unwittingly sold five to two customers at a pop-up stand near a train station in Tottori in the west of the country.

“We are very sorry to have sold these samples by mistake,” a company representative said Wednesday. An employee realized the mistake shortly after the sale, and customers luckily returned the fake pies at the stand before taking a potentially painful first bite. Stickers will now be used to distinguish real pies from plastic desserts to prevent further incidents.

The plastic food samples, known as “shokuhin sampuru”, are crafted with painstaking care to present the food sold by establishments as realistically as possible, whether it’s the droplets of moisture on a pint of beer or the glistening surface of a bowl of ramen.