Normally they should be harmless, humorous or witty. Instead, musician Jan Delay experienced an unpleasant surprise on New Year’s Eve when he read the sayings in his crackers: They were dripping with sexism and made the musician position himself clearly on social networks. The manufacturer has since responded.
In the sayings that Jan Delay had to read on New Year’s Eve, the manufacturer made fun of the allegedly poor qualities of women when parking and domestic violence. A red line for Jan Delay: the musician wrote on Twitter that he was “speechless” about “these ‘jokes’ from our crackers” and added: “Happy 1953”. Apparently not an isolated case: After Jan Delay, several other Twitter users also posted photos with similar sayings from their crackers.
The manufacturer Weco mentioned in the tweet has since commented and apologized for the misogynist slogans. One was “confronted with the same problem” five years ago. Although “all textual content was extensively revised” afterwards, older production batches could still have been sold to customers in 2022.
The company found the content presented “neither funny nor tasteful nor contemporary”, as the manufacturer announced on Monday in response to a dpa request and apologized “to all people who feel offended or attacked by the texts”. According to Weco, crackers have no sell-by date and are therefore never completely sold in one year. Due to the corona pandemic, there were also no sales of crackers in 2020 and 2021.
The company did not say whether leftovers from old batches were still waiting for customers at the end of 2023 and how they could be recognized before buying.
