Food giant Sanitarium has deleted a fake blue-tick account it created on Twitter, after its Marmite NZ brand impersonated its rival Australian-made Vegemite product.
"Best $8 we ever spent," read the tweet by the blue-tick 'verified' Vegemite4real account.
"It's time to come clean....Marmite is better than Vegemite...it always has been," it said, alongside a cheeky wink emoji.
Posted on Saturday, there had been over 10,000 likes and 2700 re-tweets as of today. Facebook and Instagram posts also took off.
But after 1News made inquiries this afternoon, the Vegemite4real account was mysteriously deleted - across all platforms.
Sanitarium didn't explain why the posts were deleted but said via a spokesperson, "In this digital world, the post on Facebook was a bit of friendly banter by our social team."
The two brands are long-time rivals. The Vegemite brand, created in 1923, claims to "taste like Australia," while Marmite attests "you only have to lift the lid and smell the difference".
Made by charity, Sanitarium, Marmite's website claims it was originally from England.
"It was discovered as early as 1680 but was first manufactured for commercial purposes in 1902 in England. Sanitarium bought the rights to distribute Marmite™ in Australia and NZ back in 1908, with Marmite™ making its first appearance on NZ shelves in 1910."
Earlier this month, Twitter launched a subscription service for US$8 (NZ$13.51) a month that includes a blue checkmark now given to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the platform’s verification system.
The change represents the end of Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians.
Twitter before the overhaul had about 423,000 verified accounts.
It comes as Elon Musk has tweeted that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another.
The relaunched premium service was unavailable on Friday after the social media platform was flooded by a wave of imposter accounts it itself had approved.
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