World Cup 2014

Unofficial England World Cup mugs, with the image of US president Barack Obama mistakenly used instead of defender Chris Smalling, are proving popular after being put on sale online.

They are now being sold off as novelty items.

A quarter of the consignment of 2,000 mugs were bought by people in the US.

Wholesale Clearance UK based in Poole, Dorset, bought the mugs as factory seconds after a mix-up by an employee at the manufacturers.

Andy White of Wholesale Clearance UK, which specialises in buying end-of-line stock and factory seconds, said it had knowingly bought the mugs when they were offloaded by a merchandising company.


He said a new employee had been tasked with sourcing images for a range of "unofficial market-stall type mugs", but the incorrect image was missed when the designs were checked.

Mr White said there were "not that many left", with 500 being sold to US buyers.

He admitted to having kept one for himself.

"Every now and again something strange crops up and, with the interest in social media, it goes crazy.

"They are a real novelty value. Once they are gone, they're gone."



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.

The 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.

OMG he looks like my ex