Walmart was forced to remove a pro-recycling T-shirt from its stores last week after an eagle-eyed customer posted a photo on Twitter revealing that the placement of words spelled out the C-word, the New York Post reported.
The green T-shirt shows the letters RE in big print followed by the words “cycle,” “use,” “new,” and “think” in smaller print and stacked one on top of the other.
In other words, “Recycle,” “Reuse,” “Renew,” and “Rethink.”
However, the T-shirt creator didn’t notice that the first letter of each of the four words, when read downward, spells out the very rude C-word.
But Twitter user @whosurdaddienow did notice. On April 3, she tweeted a photo of the shirt, joking that she needed to get it before Walmart discovers what it’s done, adding “Find the hidden word.”
The tweet was flooded with replies from Twitter users enjoying the heck out of @whosurdaddienow’s comical word search puzzle. So far, the tweeted image has been viewed more than 2.8 million times.
As soon as the image went viral, Walmart finally did realize what it had done and quickly removed the shirt from its shelves.
A Walmart spokesperson told Newsweek that the C-word’s cameo appearance on the shirt was not intentional.
The shirt, which is from the Walmart-owned George fashion brand, was only available in Canadian Walmart stores where it sold for $5. It was not available in Walmart stores in the US. However, the same shirt can still be purchased from Amazon for $19.98 and GoodShirts for $21.95.
This isn’t the first time Walmart had to pull a T-shirt design for including something controversial.
In 2017, Walmart had to remove an anti-journalist T-shirt from its online store that featured the words, “Rope. Tree. Journalist.” followed by “some assembly required.”
