Nothing as British as tea-time you would think, and nothing as British as Christmas celebrations. We can only guess that with those two ideas in mind the marketing team over at Poundland had a go at creating one of the most spoken about images in recent UK marketing. On it, as you can see above, is an elf ‘teabagging’ Barbie.
For those of you who don’t know, tea-bagging is a slang term for a sexual act in which the male puts his scrotum into his partner's mouth over and over, like a tea bag being put into a cup of hot water. Tea bagging can be considered as an act of male domination, which he might use to humiliate his partner.
Other images in the quite controversial, and definitely un-British upper lip, Christmas campaign include the same elf playing strip poker with other dolls, as well as one where he’s holding up a sign offering ‘free moustache rides’, insisting to be kissed.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Joker, joker, I really want to poker <a href="https://t.co/wNIZcrBWZF">pic.twitter.com/wNIZcrBWZF</a></p>— Poundland (@Poundland) <a href="https://twitter.com/Poundland/status/943451233775443968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 20, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Twining tea was not amused of its product being used in this manner and immediately put out a statement: “We are aware of an image that is circulating that misuses our product. This is to confirm that we had no involvement in this and that it is obviously not reflective of our brand values.”
Shocking Christmas scenes are nothing new in the UK this year. Just last month the sausage company Gregg’s had to apologize to customers after having replaced baby Jesus in the nativity scene with a sausage roll
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Greggs forced to apologise after PR shots promoting advent calendar replace baby Jesus with a SAUSAGE ROLL <a href="https://t.co/q0qwd4ISxh">pic.twitter.com/q0qwd4ISxh</a></p>— Andrew Bloch (@AndrewBloch) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewBloch/status/930716727205384192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
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that's hilarious