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Daily Record
Daily Record
Lifestyle
Nicola Roy & Nia Dalton

The 'depressing' detail on Lyle's golden syrup tins that has people shocked

People are just discovering a "dark" detail on tins of Lyle's golden syrup, despite the branding being officially recognised by the Guinness World Records as the oldest in the nation.

The unique yellow lion can be found on tins of the sweet stuff in UK kitchens everywhere after launching over 150 years ago. At first glance, it looks like the beast is simply lying down - but there's a "disturbing" backstory that some shoppers have been traumatised by.

One person took to Twitter to share their shocking revelation, writing: "Tell me I'm not the only one who didn't realise the lion on Lyle's Golden Syrup packaging is depicted dead?!" It turns out that many others had no idea of the historical background story, The Mirror reports.

In fact, the dead lion surrounded by buzzing bees is inspired by the Biblical tale of Samson.

Creator Abram Lyle, a Scots businessman, decided to use the Bible's Lion and the Bees story for his packaging after opening a sugar refinery back in 1883. According to the scriptures, Samson kills a young lion with his bare hands after it roared and made its way toward him.

A couple of days later, he returned to the lion's body and saw that a swarm of bees had built a hive inside its carcass. He inspected the hive, took some of the honey and presented it to his parents.

When they asked where he'd got it from, Samson replied: "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet."

People on Reddit were also mind-blown at this discovery after it was posted on the Casual UK thread.

"This is the most depressing thing I've learnt since I found out that the little piggy who went to market was not going on a shopping trip," one user replied.

"I did not know this. That's pretty dark," another said, while a third wrote: "I didn't need to know this."

It's also recently come to light for a lot of people what a Christmas nutcracker is actually used for.

Despite maybe being obvious for many, lots of festive fans thought they were just for decoration - and were unaware that they were actually functional for cracking nuts open.

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