Googly Eyes Used to Lure Customers to Fish Shop

A Kuwaiti fish store has been closed down after the business got caught sticking googly eyes to make their fish look fresher.

Al Bayan, an Arabic language newspaper, tweeted photos of one of the googly-eyed fish on Sept. 1 after the fish shop was inspected by the local Department of Commerce, The Huffington Post reported.

The tweet prompted Twitter users to make fun of the store owner’s marketing creativity, setting off a trend of googly eye memes.

One fish shop saw the trend as their own marketing opportunity and announced that they were going to sell “fish without cosmetic surgery.”

Another fish shop followed, marketing their produce as fresh fish that didn’t require different colored contact lenses.

Before Al Bayan tweeted the photos, Ayman Mat from Kuwait City uploaded a video of the googly-eyed fish on Facebook.

In the video, it quickly becomes apparent that an otherwise normal-looking fish had a googly eye placed in the fish’s eye socket as a hand moves in to reveal a dark yellow eyeball underneath.

Entrepreneur Mohamed El Dahshan later tweeted: “Kuwaiti police has shut down a fish store that was sticking googly eyes on fish to make them appear more fresh than they are.”

One Twitter user commented on the clampdown by the authorities, saying that the non-violent crime was too creative to be illegal.

Ashley Feinberg from the Huffington Post tweeted, “my strongest-held belief is that extremely creative crimes that don’t involve maiming another person should be allowed.”