

Barack Obama England World Cup mugs are selling fast
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.