Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve no doubt noticed that the popular World War II catchphrase “Keep Calm and Carry On” has appeared on t-shirts and mugs, sporting adapted phrases such as “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” and other harmless versions. But one retailer crossed the line by using the phrase to promote violence and even rape.
U.S.—based clothing company Solid Gold Bomb thought it was a good idea to design shirts that donned the slogan, “Keep Calm and Rape A Lot,” and “Keep Calm and Knife Her” and then tried to sell them on Amazon’s website in the United Kingdom.
Customers began complaining to Amazon.co.uk about these products on Friday, which included such gems as “keep calm and grope a lot,” but the items were still available several hours after initial complaints were made, according to BBC News. The “add to cart” button was first disabled, and then the t-shirts – and all other 8,425 items by the retailer – were removed from the mass-market site around 2 p.m. GMT on Saturday.
Solid Gold Bomb has since apologized for their wrongdoing, calling it a “computer error.”
“As the party responsible within our company for scripting and creating this automated process that created the matched slogans for this ‘Keep Calm’ series, I apologise for the offensive response this has created across the world,” Solid Gold Bomb founder Michael Fowler said. “No words can express how I feel about what has occured and in no way do I condone or promote this serious issue.”
Solid Gold Bomb has since deleted its Facebook and Twitter account, as well, but that hasn’t stopped people from harshly criticizing the company on social media.
the excuses being rolled out by Solid Gold Bomb are just like their tshirts, unoriginal, unacceptable and offensive wp.me/p2m4eI-5j
— Emma Walsh (@Walshe_89) March 4, 2013
I think Solid Gold Bomb’s excuse is possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever read: itv.com/news/2013-03-0… “Auto generated”? Seriously?
— Vikki B. (@_vixx) March 2, 2013
Even former Labour deputy leader Lord Prescott had some words for them:
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Perhaps Solid Gold Bomb will monitor their systems more closely so this alleged “computer error” doesn’t happen again.
