Some of these had to be intentional.

August 31, 2011 6:44 AM

Products with unintentionally vulgar sticker placements. That is all.
posted by Obscure Reference (75 comments total)

I'd wager some of those were not entirely unintentional, but that would be nitpicking.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:48 AM on August 31, 2011 [12 favorites]

This leaves my inner 14-year old giggling hysterically.
posted by chavenet at 6:49 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

"These stickers not only tell you the prices of products, but also how little attention is being paid by the people who put prices on products."

Oh, I think they're paying plenty of attention. Boring retail job + opportunity to liven up day = hilarity.

(From the post title, I suspect Obscure Reference has the same suspicion.)
posted by FishBike at 6:50 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm guessing pretty much all of them were intentional, or at least moved after the original placement. Those Borders stickers are pretty easy to remove, and the second one isn't even on very well.

something something photoshop pixels
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:50 AM on August 31, 2011

Only some? Way back in the dark days of my youth when management saw fit to hand me a pricing gun, I did this. And I suspect any teenager of similar emotional caliber did the same.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 6:50 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

I had some laughs. Reminds me of a story my father used to tell me. He said, week in, week out, the newspaper's blurb summary of the 1956 film Moby Dick read "Gregory Peck in the title role."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:51 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

You know what, today had been kind of crappy but then I saw POO PARADISE
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 6:53 AM on August 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

Heh heh. My wife and I drove by an Ortho Mattress store at night, and the ORT letters had burned out. Now we call the chain Ho Mattress.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:54 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

Butt closure is no laughing matter, people. It affects us all.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:55 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Craps and Moby Dick are funny without needing modification.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:58 AM on August 31, 2011

Lol. That is all.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:59 AM on August 31, 2011

I used to work in a drug store back in the day. It was very, very boring work. I can assure you that very few, if any, of those were unintentional.

Also they forgot every single cover of SFX magazine, in which they place the head of that month's genre hero into the personal space of the F such that it appears at a glance to be superimposed over the bottom of an E, and thus the title is really SEX!

(Okay, not every issue, but a good three fourths of them. Enough that they've obviously come upon the idea and are doing it deliberately.)
posted by Naberius at 6:59 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

Also from the same site. I've seen many of these before, but it's a nice place to collate them. (But they should really obscure the number on that hot pink flyer, since it was obviously put there to harass someone.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:59 AM on August 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

Oh, hell, I'd be surprised if some of them were *not* intentional.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:00 AM on August 31, 2011

Cheap laffs, they is the best.
posted by mazola at 7:00 AM on August 31, 2011

Oh, man, Jew Wipes are back on the market? Finally! I've been sitting here completely covered in schmutz.
posted by griphus at 7:01 AM on August 31, 2011 [42 favorites]

I recommend this one for laffs.*






*since a lot of these are old, I am legally required to spell it incorrectly.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:02 AM on August 31, 2011 [34 favorites]

I recommend this one for laffs.*

I am genuinely surprised that didn't have this one in it.
posted by griphus at 7:04 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

Oh great, now I'm going to get to hear my wife complain that I wouldn't let her remove the G from McDonald's "Hungry for Angus?" sign.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:07 AM on August 31, 2011 [10 favorites]

Right those are unintentional. Like "subliminal sex in advertising," I'm sure this is the product of some bored workers expressing creativity.
posted by frecklefaerie at 7:11 AM on August 31, 2011

Also from the same site. I've seen many of these before, but it's a nice place to collate them. (But they should really obscure the number on that hot pink flyer, since it was obviously put there to harass someone.)

Oh. Oh no.

Folks, if you live in the Philly area, please check out the the 69th street terminal. Because as soon as I can work it, this shit is gonna be plastered where ever I can put it.

HELLO
IS IT ME YOU'RE LOOKING FOR
[PIC OF LIONEL RITCHIE]

Y Y
E E
S S

Because that is golden.
posted by angrycat at 7:13 AM on August 31, 2011

Ass Clown
posted by dfan at 7:18 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hunry for Angus?
posted by kingbenny at 7:19 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

For several months in my town, the "T" had burned out on a shop sign so we had a store called "Mike's Expert ire."
posted by thebrokedown at 7:21 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

The "anal fantasy" with the bored cat staring at me is full of lulz.

sometimes you don't even need a pricetag, just an odd angle... (I snapped this at a grocery store last year)
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 7:25 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

In Arlington, VA, there's a cleaning place that often advertised a sale on "RUGS AND DRAPES" on a sign with movable letters, with predictable results.
posted by empath at 7:25 AM on August 31, 2011 [8 favorites]

National Lampoon used to have a section where people would send in photos of stuff they'd found. Sometimes it was signs with missing letters. My favorites were:

COME TAKE A DIP IN OUR POO

and

SMURF ASSES ARE HERE! FREE WITH MEDIUM D INK
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 7:27 AM on August 31, 2011

Finally, a church I can get excited about.
posted by jbickers at 7:30 AM on August 31, 2011

Has any movie ever had a higher ratio of people who remember a line from the TV commercial vs. people who've actually seen it than And Justice For All?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:37 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

The already unfortunately named Tom Raper RV had a store in my town where they a) thought it would be a good idea to put a sign up that said, merely, "RAPER," and b) did not immediately fix that sign after the light on the second 'R' went out.
posted by bookish at 7:37 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

In my high school years I worked at a local hardware store in town. One of my jobs was to change the large marquee sign out by the town's main street using a giant suction cup on a pole. So, one hot summer day I'm putting letters up in reverse order and for a few moments the cars driving by are honking and waving. What were we advertising that day? GRASS SEED.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:46 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

My two favorite 'no modification necessary' product things were "doo dads" which had the name written in a font where if you flipped the box, it clearly spelled "spap oop", and some kind of chocolate-peanut thing where the illustration was something like a chocolate splash with happy looking lips above it, but if you turned it upside down looked exactly like the lips were about to begin fellatio on a shaft of chocolate.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:57 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Many many years ago, there was a large hotel in Glendale, CA known as the Hotel Glendale with a large neon sign on the roof. For many years the EL were burned out. Given the resulting message, it was rumored that no one wanted to fix it.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:02 AM on August 31, 2011

And of course there's the McDonalds in the New South Wales town of Yass.
posted by madcaptenor at 8:02 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

I'm guessing pretty much all of them were intentional, or at least moved after the original placement. Those Borders stickers are pretty easy to remove, and the second one isn't even on very well.

Believe it or not, Borders had rules which required stickers to be placed in a specific location on covers. Upper right front quadrant for bargain books - which arrived pre-stickered from the distribution centers. Discount stickering - for bestsellers, or BOGOs or the like, was done at the store, since the discounts changed from week to week, but those were also required to be placed in specific locations. Customers often complained that we were obscuring titles or cover art.

(Shout out to all my former Borders peeps, suffering through the Liquidation under the whip of the Liquid-haters , and special shout out to all the former DC employees who are already out of a job - the distribution centers made their last shipments of books last week.)
posted by ereshkigal45 at 8:05 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Metropolitan Rage Warehouse. Ire Proof.
posted by madcaptenor at 8:06 AM on August 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

Madcaptenor, thanks for making me get all wistful and missing Boston.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:13 AM on August 31, 2011

I recommend this one for laffs.*


Come see my new band, Applaud the Jellyfish.
posted by drezdn at 8:13 AM on August 31, 2011

FAMOUS MONSTER: You know what, today had been kind of crappy but then I saw POO PARADISE

I was talking with some American friends the other day that were moving to England. I mentioned in passing that A. A. Milne was an English author, who they had was American. One of them said: "It makes perfect sense, if Milne had been an American the bear would've been called Winnie the Shit."
posted by Kattullus at 8:15 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Just the other night a friend and I were deep in the bowels of Huntington, VA when we drove by the Virgin Lodge--both on the way out and the way back since the -ia was burned out on both sides. We suspected it might be intentional until we passed the irgin odge on a return trip to Loew's.

There is also a sign near my hometown that promises Ho-Made pizza. I guess you work up an appetite with all that paid sex.
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 8:15 AM on August 31, 2011

"unintentional" : ... and I didn't stock women's heels below waist level because those particular customers generally wore short skirts.
posted by Ardiril at 8:17 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

Oh great, now I'm going to get to hear my wife complain that I wouldn't let her remove the G from McDonald's "Hungry for Angus?" sign.

Let me tell you, Black Angus without the G changes a restaurant into a whole new dining offer.
posted by yeloson at 8:17 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

"It makes perfect sense, if Milne had been an American the bear would've been called Winnie the Shit."

On our way to the beach this year, we drove past "Pooh and Tigger Street" (or Ave, or Blvd) in Delaware. We were in a semi-rural area and figured people were allowed to name their own streets. But were glad someone had the foresight to tack "and Tigger" on there.
posted by librarianamy at 8:22 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

HonoriaGlossop, would the Ho-Made pizza be in Williamsport PA by any chance? I know that the 6 pack store (next to the cigarette shop across the street from New China Royal) advertises Ho-Made Fries.
posted by sperose at 8:22 AM on August 31, 2011

Sperose, it is in Wisconsin. Perhaps it is a burgeoning new chain. Watch out, Five Guys (and for that matter, Hooters), there's a hot new franchise on the market.
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 8:28 AM on August 31, 2011

I like pie and flow charts myself.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:31 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think that some of these are definitely intentional, but the ones that are just stuck in the left-or right-hand corners really may just be the product of blind, repetitive stickering.
posted by hermitosis at 8:32 AM on August 31, 2011

A restaurant in my hometown also employs hoes in the kitchen, the frequently advertise their "Ho-made lasagna"
posted by shesaysgo at 8:34 AM on August 31, 2011

For the sake of accuracy: I'm pretty sure the little ho on the prairie was Nellie Oleson.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:38 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

One night we rode the Boston T's "B" line past a camping gear store in Brighton called "Wilderness House." Several letters were burned out so it said "Wilderness Ho." Seeing this my then-roomate boomed out, "Come back in the tent, woman!"

OK, so it seemed funny at the time.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:42 AM on August 31, 2011

"hoes in the kitchen" - Yum, hoe cakes.
posted by Ardiril at 8:48 AM on August 31, 2011

I would watch the shit out of We All Sin Together.
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:59 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Not vulgar, but the local SEARS had the lights in the 'E' burnt out one night.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:03 AM on August 31, 2011

I came in to be the 54th person saying Who says they were unintentional?
posted by theora55 at 9:22 AM on August 31, 2011

I've a really low bar for finding these pants-wettingly funny - like, low enough to barely need funny. There's a street in Dublin called Peter Place that was changed to "Pete Pace" for years and I would snort with laughter and be in a totally different mood every time I saw it.
posted by carbide at 9:29 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Has no one mentioned the Salt Lake, Utah shirt? No? Then allow me: http://tinyurl.com/3eok62e
posted by airgirl at 9:30 AM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

A few years ago there was a Dennis Quaid thriller came out on DVD called 'Horsemen.'

The title on the cover is along the width of the bottom. Barnes and Noble DVDs are all stickered in the lower left corner, and not by human hands. The result was the sticker covered handily the first three letters, so the movie title said "SEMEN." It didn't help that the tag line written across Dennis' face said "Come and see."
posted by TheRedArmy at 9:47 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

Some products don't even need help.
posted by TheRedArmy at 9:48 AM on August 31, 2011

I wonder if Bill Cosby has learned the value of commas?
posted by SpiffyRob at 10:20 AM on August 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

oh man, thank you.
posted by jonclegg at 10:23 AM on August 31, 2011

It's not an uncommon surname around these parts, but the name in combination with the shape of the sign...

My inner teenager thinks it's funny.
posted by Sourisnoire at 10:46 AM on August 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

My hometown had the HOTEL MORGAN. A guy I knew was always threatening to shoot out the "EL M" with an air rifle, but as far as I know he never followed through, sadly.
posted by rifflesby at 11:42 AM on August 31, 2011

Heh heh. My wife and I drove by an Ortho Mattress store at night, and the ORT letters had burned out. Now we call the chain Ho Mattress.

I still occasionally mention to people the time a local Big Lots store, for a good six months, had the "L" burnt out of its storefront sign. Considering the store was in semi-rural Georgia, it was probably a lot more accurate.
posted by JHarris at 12:12 PM on August 31, 2011

I remember a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign where some of the letters burned out to look like this: ucky Fried ick .
posted by Quasimike at 12:19 PM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh great, now I'm going to get to hear my wife complain that I wouldn't let her remove the G from McDonald's "Hungry for Angus?" sign.


I got you covered.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:31 PM on August 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

google to the rescue. lol
posted by jeffburdges at 3:52 PM on August 31, 2011

This one reminded me of SNL's Gas Right skit.
posted by homunculus at 4:02 PM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Another broken sign.
posted by uniq at 5:04 PM on August 31, 2011

This UK product made my boyfriend and I laugh every time we saw it. We're a sophisticated pair and I'm guessing, not alone because when the product was launched in Australia it had been disappointingly renamed.
posted by Wantok at 6:01 PM on August 31, 2011

Products with unintentionally vulgar sticker placements. That is all.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:44 AM - 69 comments (69 new) +
posted by ovvl at 6:05 PM on August 31, 2011

And a broken sign that became the establishment's new name.
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:41 PM on August 31, 2011

Can't forget this pic of Elmhurst hospital.. with the E and the s lights out, it seems to say, "I'm hurt"
posted by borborygmi at 9:14 PM on August 31, 2011

Speaking of signs with missing letters.
posted by empath at 9:25 PM on August 31, 2011

My favorite Amazon product
posted by akash at 11:57 PM on August 31, 2011

I remember in Rehoboth Beach, DE one year there was an abandoned "Ames" with a broken sign so it only read "Am", and there was some kind of g/i fetish club night they held there called "Am". My bro in law wanted to check it out, but the next year I went, it was a flea market.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea, especially since there's an abandoned grocery store right near my apartment...
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:47 AM on September 1, 2011