Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #583

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Supermarket Pulls 'Merry Ham-mas' Bag As Christmas Pun Falls Flat
By Kate Nicholson
An Australian sup ermarket was forced to pull one of its festive items and apolo- gize following concerns over a Christmas pun: “Merry Ham- mas!”
Kmart released a drawstring bag with this phrase written in large letters on the side as part of its Christmas collec- tion, but the Australian Jewish
Association (AJA) suggested it could be seen as an unintentional reference to the ongoing Israel- Hamas war.
The bag was designed to store a Christmas ham in the fridge, as the meat is nor- mally centre stage for Australian Christmas holi- days. On the other side of the bag were instruc- tions “to keep your ham fresh for longer”
according to the product page.
However, in the context of recent world events, the Jewish organiza- tion said it “polite- ly suggested” the bag should be taken off the mar- ket, because the slogan sounds like the word Hamas.
Hamas, the group
of Palestinian mili tants who launched an attack on Israel and killed 1,400
people and took more than 200 others hostage last month, has been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the UK, the US and Australia among others.
Writing on X, the AJA said: “Although this is potentially funny (the AJA commit- tee has tossed around some non-PC jokes) it’s really not a good look.
“We suspect
some product manager may cause the com- pany some embarrassment.
“So we’ve politely written to Wesfarmers cor- porate suggest- ing the product be pulled.”
An hour after that initial post, the Australian Jewish Association said it had been con- tacted by senior management at the parent com- pany with confir- mation it would
be removed from the site.
The retail chain’s owners, Wesfarmers, apologized, and as of Thursday morning, the product was no longer accessible on the Kmart site.
In a statement issued to The West
Australian outlet, a spokesperson said: “We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologize unre- servedly.
“When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale.”
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