The designers of a set of unofficial England World Cup 2014 mugs accidentally used a photograph of US President Barrack Obama to represent England and Manchester United defender Chris Smalling.
After discovering their error, the unnamed Dorset-based manufacturers quickly sold off their stocks of 2,000 misprinted mugs to clearance retailer Wholesale Clearance.
Seeing the mugs for their amusement value, the retailer put the mugs up for sale as “football look-a-likes” under the title “Clearance Lot of wonderfully mistaken Chris Smalling England cups”
The company explains how the mugs came into existence in the product description, saying:
“The Dorset company in question (whose blushes we shall protect for now….maybe!) was given the seemingly easy job of sourcing royalty free pictures of each England squad player to use on the England mugs – along with other accompanying items such as England coasters, England mouse mats etc. They passed this onto to their young, bright eyed and bushy tailed new apprentice. The designs were proofed and signed off by the Boss, who had clearly had a heavy night with the lads playing poker and before he’d had his first vat of coffee the following morning.
“Due to our ongoing commitment to help local companies get their products noticed, last Wednesday 2,000 of each of the England items came into the warehouse. We eagerly unpacked them and on close inspection it turned out that the Chris Smalling cup had Barack Obama’s head on instead of Chris’s.
“e apprentice claims that he used that well known search engine, Google, to source the pictures. The thing is he’s more of a rugby fan and not very clued up on football. Suffice to say that when he Google image searched ‘Chris Smalling’ he copied the first picture he liked the look of and the result was that the President of the United States has ended up on an England cup instead of the English defender.”
