PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2009-01-16 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Risqué Images on Biscuit Tin (fr)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • In April 2004, a collection of about 100 biscuit tins accumulated by West Country aristocrat Count de Salis was put up for auction in the UK by Lawrences Auctioneers. One item of especial interest from this collection was a tin produced by biscuit makers Huntley and Palmers, renowned for their elaborate biscuit packaging to the extent that the tin lids were designed to be displayed on kitchen walls. The tin of interest came with a lid featuring an illustration of an Edwardian garden party based on a painting by 19th century children's illustrator Kate Greenaway. What made this one tin particularly noteworthy was that the illustration on its lid included some background details most definitely not suitable for children: a jam jar bearing a label with a vulgar four-letter word for excrement, an image of two dogs copulating, and an image of two naked lovers engaging in some splendor in the grass: According to news accounts, the tins with the risqué lid illustration had first been issued around 1980, but the naughty details remained unnoticed until a shopkeeper finally spotted them with a magnifying glass years later; by the time Huntley and Palmers ceased production of tins using that design, thousands of them had already been sold. How did those scabrous images come to be part of the biscuit tin artwork in the first place? The proffered explanation was a familiar one — it was a final act of revenge undertaken by a disgruntled, sacked employee: We were a bit skeptical of this explanation, as most instances we've encountered of corporate shenanigans being attributed to disgruntled, revenge-seeking former employees actually turned out to be impish pranks carried out by non-disgruntled, non-vengeful current employees who allowed their penchants for levity to get the better of their senses of professional decorum. But regardless of how the salacious details came to be part of the titillating tin's artwork, they were, as a Huntley and Palmers spokesman said, a funny example of what happens when things go wrong in the manufacturing process. On 8 April 2018, the BBC published a video in which an illustrator explained how he sneaked 'naughty' images on to biscuit tins of a leading manufacturer, which were distributed world-wide as a prank. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url