The Wonderland Kraft Christmas Gift Tags from The Warehouse, featuring a spelling mistake.
The Wonderland Kraft Christmas Gift Tags from The Warehouse, featuring a spelling mistake.
Despite a direction there was to be “no peaking (sic) until Christmas”, shoppers spotted a glaring spelling error on a holiday product being sold at The Warehouse.
A post on social media showed a pack of gift labels from the retailer printed with various festive designs, including some with thephrases “No peaking until December 25″ and “No peaking until Christmas”.
The accompanying caption read: “As spotted at The Warehouse this afternoon” alongside facepalm and laughing emojis.
The Cambridge dictionary defines peaking as the present participle of the verb peak – to reach the highest, strongest or best point, value or level of skill. In comparison, peeking means to look, especially for a short time, or while trying to avoid being seen.
The Wonderland Kraft Christmas Gift Tags are also available through The Warehouse’s online store, where they retail at $3.50 for a pack of 24. The product description says each pack includes kraft-style gift tags in “four unique festive designs”.
“Featuring a mix of playful messages and seasonal illustrations, these tags are perfect for personalising your Christmas gifts with charm and cheer.”
A number of items from The Warehouse's Wonderland range feature spelling errors.
The Kiwi-owned retailer is also selling a decorative sign with a misspelling of the world’s most prominent reindeer. The Wonderland Novelty Hanging Santa’s Reindeer Sign Decoration, $8, is listed as featuring “all nine names, including Rudolph”. However, that isn’t accurate – the last name listed on the decorative sign is Rudolf.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by copywriter Robert L May in 1939, appearing in a booklet published by Chicago department store Montgomery Ward. The Germanic version of the name, Rudolf, derives from the words Hruod, meaning fame, and olf, meaning wolf.
In 2022, The Warehouse Group apologised after releasing a poster of a map of Aotearoa with many misspelled Māori names, including Rotorua (spelled Roturua), Wairoa, (spelled Weiroa) and Paraparaumu (spelled Paraparaumo).
In 2023, Australian-headquartered store chain Kmart removed a Christmas food-themed bag featured the pun “ham-mas” in large lettering from shelves after the Australian Jewish Association pointed out the unintentional visual likeness to Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by several countries and international bodies, including Australia and New Zealand.
