UK retailer Marks & Spencer has set into motion legal action against German-owned company Aldi. The former argues that the latter's children's cake bears a striking resemblance to their iconic Colin the Caterpillar.

Colin the Caterpillar has been an M&S staple since 1990. The retailer claims that Aldi's version, named Cuthbert the Caterpillar, infringes its Colin trademark. The product is not on sale here in Ireland.

According to the BBC, the company says that the similarities between the cakes could lead customers into believing both cakes are "of the same standard" and "rides on the coat-tails" of their reputable M&S brand.

The retailer lodged an intellectual property claim with the High Court in the UK this week, and wishes for Aldi to remove the product from its shelves and to not create anything similar in the future.

A spokesperson for the company said: "Because we know the M&S brand is special to our customers and they expect only the very best from us, love and care goes into every M&S product on our shelves.

"So we want to protect Colin, Connie and our reputation for freshness, quality, innovation and value."

Colin, and his friend/sister/partner (?) Connie the Caterpillar, are basically a chocolate sponge cake with buttercream and chocolate. While Aldi is the first supermarket to bear the brunt of M&S, there are some other very similar cakes from other UK retailers such as Tesco (Curly), Sainsbury's (Wiggles), Waitrose (Cecil), and Asda (Clyde).