Every now and then, a company makes such a big mistake that it seems hard to believe that nobody ever noticed it. Yet, given their inevitably embarrassed reactions when the public points each one out, that’s clearly what happens.
A PR gaffe is a bad enough when it doesn’t lead people to believe you endorse one of the world’s most notorious hate groups, but today’s blunder did exactly that for Ferrero, who owns the Kinder brand.
This saga all began with one Australian mom buying her one-year-old son a special treat. A chocolate egg with the parts for a toy inside.
But as she told Kidspot, there was an unpleasant surprise in store for her once they assembled the toy.
Now, it’s pretty hard to believe that Kinder could have anything offside in those little eggs.
Classically, Kinder delighted children with tiny figurines, and became a household name in children’s branding.
And more recently, they’ve paired with iconic brands like Disney/Marvel to bring kids what they really want — their favorite action figures.
That’s what the people want.
But MOST recently, Kinder took everyone by surprise with a toy that more shocking than any before.
And to to be honest, even us internet regulars were shook about this not-so-kinder and very-much-surprise!
To her shock, the toy turned out to be a happy little egg holding balloons that joined together to spell out “KKK.”
The mother, Kimberly, said she initially laughed in shock because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Her son, Alexander, is too young to understand the implications here, but they were immediately obvious to Kimberly.
And because it was so clear to her, she wondered how it was possible that nobody who designed the toy noticed the problem.
She told Kidspot that this made her wonder what the Ferrero company supports and whether this was subliminal marketing vfor the notorious Ku Klux Klan.
As this tweet suggests, she apparently wasn’t the only one.
As the buzz about this toy grew, other users thought they noticed a distinct hairstyle on the toy, as well.
That so-called “Donald Trump hair” is likely supposed to be a hat, but the question remained: Why do those balloons say KKK?
Kimberly needed some answers, so she contacted the Kinder team for an explanation.
What she discovered was that the company had actually failed to notice what those K balloons spelled out and responded with an apology.
They further stated that the toy was released as a limited edition for Kinder’s 50th birthday and discontinued and all remaining stock would be kept from the market and destroyed.
So what were they trying to do with this design?
It turns out that the egg was only holding one balloon with a K on it at first. However, the toy’s designers were concerned that one balloon would make the toy too flimsy and added two more for a “more robust structure.”
Add that to the fact that the company is based in Italy, where the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t have a recorded presence,and you have a recipe for disaster.
Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reported Kinder Surprise isn’t supposed to be sold in the United States because of an 80-year-old law banning food from containing inedible parts (i.e. the toy).
So if you ever bought Kinder eggs at a store in the U.S., that store imported the product themselves.
Twitter, as always, had a lot to say about the matter.
Some were pretty peeved about the children’s toy portraying such an insensitive acronym — regardless of its accidental nature.
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Others took to the opposite perspective, and believe that this was all a huge mistake.
To be fair, if Kinder was rooting for the KKK, it likely would’ve come up a long time ago — plus, let’s reiterate that Kinder has served the children’s market for decades now! Why bother screwing with their audience?
Ferrero did make an attempt to get around the ban last year by marketing the Kinder Joy egg, but its design left fans disappointed.
Still, as much as the Kinder Joy didn’t seem to deliver what the name suggests, nothing about it accidentally referenced a racist hate group, so there’s that.
h/t: Kidspot
Regardless of what happens next, it seems like Kinder will be just fine.
As one of the most popular names in child-focused candy advertisement, they’ll keep on gettin’ YouTube reviews and “unboxings” like nothing really happened.
Hopefully, though, this PR incident teaches their product team about double checking — before some angry mommas do it for them!
