8 Massive Disasters In Marketing No One Noticed

Put the two together, and you end up with the particleboard pile of awkwardness that is the Lolita Midsleeper Combi:

Woolworths
There is no conceivable caption here that doesn't result in us going straight to hell.

Once you've had a chance to get over the initial shock (that Woolworths still exists), we should give the chain credit where credit is due: As soon as a parenting website raised a kerfuffle about the exceptionally repulsive taste of the product's branding, Woolworths removed it from their shelves and promised to find out what in the exact fuck the supplier had been smoking while naming it.

And now that we've given them some credit, let's yank it straight out from under them: In their official response, Woolworths claimed that absolutely no one at the company was aware of the statutory-rapey connotation of "Lolita," and in fact none of them had ever heard of the book (or either of the two movies based on it). Somebody slept through English class.

Penguin
You'd think you'd remember a school book cover that is practically child porn.

Hey, speaking of English class ...

Somehow, not a single adult at the Bureau for At-Risk Youth realized that their anti-drug pencils became far less anti as they were sharpened -- it took a 10-year-old student to point that out. The organization immediately reprinted the pencils in the opposite direction, thereby driving countless fourth-graders incurably mad when their secondhand pencils read "Too Cool To." Too cool to what? TOO COOL TO WHAT?!

That's right: Nike commemorated the monumental achievement of some of history's most skilled athletes by trying to sell women shirts announcing to the world that they're fucking people for money. Nike tried to pass the stunt off by saying they were just being ironic, a phrase that Alanis Morissette might define as "trying to capitalize on their relationship with Kanye to help move his stupid Air Yeezy sneakers."

Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Who would have thought? It figures.

There is no activity in existence -- whether it be playing the cowbell in a garage band or picking up Hot Pockets down at the Walmart -- that can't be made to look badass by wearing a sufficiently skully T-shirt. And it's funny we mentioned Walmart, because it just so happens that's the A-1 perfect spot to adorn yourself in a manner befitting '80s metal bands and your asshole cousin alike.

Back in 2006, they somehow managed to find clothing racks capable of withstanding the red hot manliness emanating from this bad boy:

Tim via consumerist.com
Awesome!

Does that design look familiar to you? It did to Maryland blogger Rick Rottman when he spotted the shirts at his local Wally World. Here, let's see if the insignia rings any bells when you see it on the band of this cap:

Imperial War Museum
Opposite of awesome!

Now that the sense of dread is building in your gut, let's drive that motherfucker home. Here's a photo of one of the evilest bags of dicks ever to squirm the face of the Earth, Heinrich Himmler, wearing that very hat:

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R99621/CC-BY-SA 3.0
Awesome just withered and died under his bespectacled stare.

Specifically, that symbol is a Totenkopf, and the one plastered all over Walmart's T-shirts was the version preferred by the most malevolent of the already indescribably awful Nazis: Hitler's SS. The ones with the dirtiest hands even called themselves Totenkopf Squadrons. The fact that the T-shirt had "Since 1978" printed beneath this symbol goes to show that one of the job requirements for a discount department store fashion designer is a truly illustrious ignorance of history.

After Rottman pointed out the rock-fucking idiocy of glorifying such a symbol, Walmart immediately recalled the shirts, saying, "Respect for the individual is a core value of our company" -- assuming their company doesn't employ said individual, of course.

And while we're on the subject of Nazis ...

Yes, that's an American flag with a Nazi eagle and Iron Cross in place of the 50 stars. And as they reeled to the opposite side of the car in the throes of an advertising-induced Auschwitz flashback, they'd see this:

Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Land of the Rising SON OF A BITCH!

Gracing the subway with the symbolism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was the brainchild of Amazon Prime. It was all a stunt to promote their new series The Man In The High Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick novel that posits, "What if America had lost World War II?"

Of course, you -- being the well-read and Internet-savvy epitome of connectedness that you are -- know all that. But expecting the average New York City commuter to know all that ... well, no offense to the average New York City commuter, but that was a bit much to expect. Amazon pulled the signage after Mayor Bill de Blasio called it "irresponsible and offensive," thereby unknowingly saving the psyches of our adorable (if hypothetical) elderly couple.

OK, one last Nazi entry before we move on ...

"What's so wrong with that?" you're probably asking. "That looks way fancier than the Sunday funnies my grandmother used!" Well, let's zoom in on the pattern:

Cheryl Shapiro
Happy Hanu-CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS BULLSHIT?

Yep, this wrapping paper was hiding scads of tiny swastikas. Now, we get that this was probably an honest mistake. You can probably pick out lots of different shapes in the maze-like pattern (the company says it borrowed the design from a Chinese vase). But A) this paper is being sold around Hanukkah in traditional Hanukkah colors -- the stuff is going to get bought by Jewish people to wrap gifts in -- and B) there are actually lots of patterns you can use that don't involve repeated swastikas. We dare say that there is literally an infinite number of such patterns in the universe.

So we can't decide if this was hilariously bad luck or some wrapping paper designer being a wisecracker and figuring nobody would catch it. Either way, it led to a nationwide recall.

Be it giving birth to the cartoon that defined a significant chunk of your childhood or inducing a worldwide urge to hug a bloodthirsty beast, Coca-Cola and Christmas go hand-in-hand. Coke squeezed out a real stinker for Christmas of 2015, however, by releasing a commercial in Mexico depicting a group of beautiful, young white people dropping everything to travel to a remote area of Oaxaca, construct a Coke-themed Christmas tree for Mexico's indigenous Mixe people, and give them the gift of buttloads of 20-ounce Cokes.

Idyllic, right? Merry motherfucking Christmas and all that crap! Actually, the commercial set consumer rights advocates and health groups on the offensive, because there's a whole lot of wrong going on that may not be apparent upon first glance. First and most obvious, the ad's giving off a serious white savior vibe by depicting a group of (presumably American) white folks strolling in to kick the natives straight in the dignity.

Coca-Cola
Also, at least one of them had been partaking in the wrong kind of Coke.

Even worse is the fact that Mexico's indigenous population is suffering from a serious soda problem. See, while Americans are gradually beginning to wake up and realize that gulping down bucketfuls of sugar maybe isn't the way Mother Nature intended us to quench our thirst after all, in Mexico obesity and diabetes are erupting like Mentos mixed with Diet Coke -- and that's thanks in no small part to ultra-sugary drinks. So delivering coolers full of Coca-Cola to an indigenous Mexican community would be like dropping off pallets of Mexican Brown at a heroin rehab.

Which, now that we think about it, may have been the precise intention all along.

Sam Jackson has better Googling skills than an army of marketers. Find him on Facebook and Twitter. Then go buy his friend's book.

For more campaigns we can't believe someone signed off on, check out 5 Corporate Promotions That Ended In (Predictable) Disaster and The 5 Biggest Disasters In The History Of Marketing.

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