Settle in for a brief history of Prime mania
KSI called out the Wakey Wines owner on TikTok just hours before the shop was banned from the platform.
If that sentence makes absolutely no sense to you, then allow us to fill you in with a quick recap of this insanity.
Last year, YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul launched their own energy drink, called Prime. Thanks in part to their huge online following and audience (the pair have 50 million subscribers between them) the drink has been hugely popular, particularly amongst young kids and teenagers.
This has led to huge demand for the product, which retails at £1.99, with people queueing outside
Aldis and
Asdas at stupid o'clock to get their hands on a bottle, and shelves being stripped bare in just a matter of minutes.
So, shops that have managed to get hold of Prime have seen an opportunity to
massively inflate the price, knowing that people will pay it.
Enter Wakey Wines.
The Wakefield shop has shot to internet stardom in recent weeks thanks to the owner, Mohammad Azar Nazir, sharing videos on TikTok with happy customers who have purchased Prime at his shop.
But Nazir is really raking it in. In December, he posted a video of a dad who had
spent £1,000 on Prime for his sons.
This total was then beaten by a woman from Sheffield, who apparently
forked out a stupid £1,200 on the new Prime Energy cans. Nazir had previously advertised that his shop was the only place in England with the cans in stock and
he was selling them for £100.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnHS-rEpzNb/
But the Wakey Wines account was temporarily banned from TikTok, and in a post on Instagram, Nazir said this was thanks to a "well known influencer trying to tarnish my business" and claimed his videos were just a bit of fun.
The account has since been reinstated. In a statement to JOE, TikTok said: "We are open about the fact that we don't get every moderation decision right and have reinstated the Wakey Wines account. We hope they continue to use TikTok to promote their business."
TikTok uses a combination of technologies and moderation teams to detect, review and, where appropriate, remove content or accounts that violate its
Community Guidelines.
Now, it turns out that the recent video of the women who spent £1.2k caught the attention of KSI, and safe to say he seemed pretty unhappy with Nazir's extortionate prices.
In his own TikTok, KSI shouted that Nazir "can't keep getting away with this" and urged people to "stop buying it at these prices."
KSI has previously said he doesn't like places or people raising the price of the drink.
Last year, he called out Asda workers who he claimed were
selling Prime on the black market instead of "putting it on shelves."
And last year he called out Asda on Twitter for raising the price of the drink to £2.50, making it clear that this was Asda's decision and not Prime's.
Eventually, Asda backtracked on its price increase and reverted to the normal £2.
https://twitter.com/KSI/status/1600222950593961984
So, is KSI the "high profile influencer" that Wakey Wines believes is trying to take the business down?
Whatever the case, Prime Energy continues to have a chokehold on this country.
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