A Game of Thrones actor added his star power to an elaborate April Fool’s joke by SodaStream.
Hafthór “Thor” Björnsson, who stars as giant Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane in the popular television series, appears in a YouTube video pushing what he calls his favourite brand of soda water, called Heavy Bubbles, which is packaged in dumbbell-shaped bottles of varying weights. The professional strongman is shown walking home with the bottle weights while lifting them to build strength.
The video directs viewers to a website for Heavy Bubbles soda.
After clicking on the Heavy Bubbles link, a message appears, reading: “Why do you believe such a thing? It makes no sense. With SodaStream you don’t carry plastic bottles. You don’t sweat and you make sparkling water from normal water. At home, like me.”
Björnsson joins American actress Scarlett Johansson as the face of the Israel-based SodaStream company, which had faced controversy for having a factory in the West Bank.
“I’ve been using SodaStream since I was a kid and was therefore thrilled to collaborate in this video,” Björnsson said in a statement issued by the company. “I’m always open to new techniques for exercising, but you’ve got to admit that carrying bottles home from the supermarket is a hassle and actually pretty stupid when we have an alternative such as SodaStream.”
In October 2014, SodaStream announced it would close its West Bank factory in the face of international pressure from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to damage Israel’s economy over its policies toward the Palestinians. The movement claimed that SodaStream discriminated against Palestinian workers and paid some less than Israeli workers, a claim that CEO Daniel Birnbaum has refuted over and over again.
“It’s propaganda. It’s politics. It’s hate. It’s anti-Semitism. It’s all the bad stuff we don’t want to be a part of,” Birnbaum said about closing the West Bank factory. “SodaStream should have been encouraged in the West Bank if [the BDS movement] truly cared about the Palestinian people.”
Johansson resigned in January 2014 as a global ambassador for Oxfam, a position she held for eight years, over her position with SodaStream as its first global brand ambassador.
The much anticipated sixth season of Game of Thrones begins later this month.
