Don’t follow the link suggested by Mattel or you will regret it.
The toy manufacturer Mattel has referred to a pornographic site on its Barbie packaging featuring the heroines of the musical “Oz”, in which Ariana Grande plays.
11.11.2024, 14:5211.11.2024, 16:04
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At the moment, the PR team of the American company specializing in toys and games Mattel must be on edge. It must be said that one of their employees – or perhaps an entire department, unless it was an intern – screwed up on one of their latest flagship products. This one, to make matters worse, is linked to Ariana Grande.
Indeed, the 31-year-old singer and actress is starring in the film Wickedadapted from the musical of the same name, which follows the journey of the legendary witches of the world of Oz. Ariana Grande plays Glinda the Good Witch, a character who appears in the books of writer L. Frank Baum. For her part, Cynthia Erivo plays the witch Elphaba Thropp on screen in her younger years.
While the musical comedy directed by Jon Chu is released at the end of November in the United States, Mattel has already released dolls of the witch and the good fairy. On paper, all is well in the best of all marketing worlds.
Ariana defeats Glinda.
No one checked the link
On the back of some packaging, there is a supposed link to the website dedicated to the film produced by Universal: wicked.com.
Except that! the link actually refers to a naughty site, where porn images and videos are displayed. It must be said that “wicked”, in English, translates as:
Thanks Google Translate.
Enough to open the door to multiple uses and interpretations of the word.
This is the top of the page proposed by Mattel. No, we won’t scroll????
In fact, the link to the correct site is: wickedmovie.com. Since we tell you that length can change everything!
Someone is going to get blamed. seen on reddit
According to the New York Postthe confusion was revealed on X (formerly Twitter) by fans who shared photos of the packaging.
The worst part is that hundreds of toy boxes on eBay with the error are still for sale. Mattel obviously received an avalanche of criticism for its mistake.
“Oh damn, Mattel. This is not going to end well. Wicked dolls have a PORN SITE URL on the back of the box”
seen on x.
“Whoever did the packaging of the Mattel Wicked Dolls is COOKED”
seen on x.
Not a mistake at all
(a conspiracy theorist)seen on x.
The affair has grown to such an extent that a thread reddit dedicated to this subject was born. On this one, everyone has their own little theory, like:
“It’s like the packager tried to ask their coworker what the Wicked website was and they both had no idea, so the coworker just said ‘it’s probably wicked. com.”
A typical day at work.
Others shared similar stories, from which they clearly never recovered.
“When I was a kid in the 90s, one of the first websites I tried to visit was the Spice Girls website. Except their website looked like THEspicegirls.com (or maybe it was spice.com back then) and going to spicegirls.com exposed me to internet porn! Oops!”
We tested, but since then, everything has been put back in order.
The toy maker reacted urgently on Sunday, apologizing through a press release:
“We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate steps to remedy it. Parents are advised that the poorly printed and incorrect website is not suitable for children.”
Mattel, via a press release sent to CNN.
Mattel also called on customers with truncated packaging to throw away these products (very eco-friendly), or to hide the incorrect link. Not sure this episode will help its already declining popularity.
The best of Entertainment this week
The toy manufacturer Mattel has referred to a pornographic site on its Barbie packaging featuring the heroines of the musical “Oz”, in which Ariana Grande plays.
At the moment, the PR team of the American company specializing in toys and games Mattel must be on edge. It must be said that one of their employees – or perhaps an entire department, unless it was an intern – screwed up on one of their latest flagship products. This one, to make matters worse, is linked to Ariana Grande.
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