Any hole’s a goal (Credit: @ohmnog/Getty)

Warburtons are such a wholesome little company, with their family-friendly ads and delicious, fluffy crumpets.

Think of a Warburtons crumpet and you probably think of your grandpa slathering butter and jam on them as he sips a cup of tea, in his string vest (Just me?).

You probably don’t think of grown adults dressed up as furry animals, no?

Well, you might do now after Warburtons made the classic faux pas of not checking who had already claimed a hashtag they decided to use for their latest competition.


On Friday, the bakers launched a comp with wholesome family man, children’s book author, and McFly frontman Tom Fletcher to win signed copies of his book The Christmasaurus, tickets to the live show version of the book, and packets of crumpets checked over by the singer himself.

All you had to do was upload a picture of a Christmassy crumpet creation, with the hashtag #CrumpetCreations.



It was all going so well, until one mum decided to browse the hashtag to check out what she was up against – and discovered that Warburtons had accidentally hijacked the hashtag of a company who makes costumes for furries.

The angry mother reportedly tweeted (we’ve searched high and low for the tweet but have a feeling she may have deleted it): ‘Hey Warburtons, the hashtag also belongs to a family of ‘furries’ and there are quite a few disturbing photos and videos.’

So, what are furries?

The furry community are people who enjoy dressing up in life-size animal suits.

And they already had #crumpetcreations covered, thanks to a costume company called Crumpet Creations.

Confused? Let us explain in images.

A crumpet

Not a crumpet

Crumpets

Not crumpets

Crumpets

Not a crumpet

Crumpets

Not crumpets

Ironically, this image of a partially made fur suit looks like it could be made out of crumpets.

After the mum exposed their error, Warburtons swiftly apologised and changed their hashtag to #WarburtonsChristmasCrumpets, which makes a lot more sense and we’re not sure why they didn’t just use that in the first place.

A Warburtons spokesperson told Metro.co.uk: ‘The world of social media is a wonderful and varied place but this shows just how easy it is to get it wrong!

‘We will be doing a bit more research next time!’

We reached out to Crumpet Creations to see what they thought about the whole debacle. The creator found the whole thing pretty funny, but would like to use the blunder as a way to get rid of some of the myths around the furry community.

’99 percent of the costumes out there are not used for any sexual matters,’ she told Metro.co.uk.

‘That being said, will I decline that there is a sexualized side to the community, no. I will not. Most of that nastiness you see is typically in art, online. Every community or fandom has it’s side and just the same, we have ours.

‘The costumes you tend to actually see in public are not used for such activities. People pay tremendous amounts for the costumes and it would be a rather large waste to use them for those activities.

‘On top of that, our community as a whole views anyone who DOES use their costume for those as rather nasty. Once we catch wind of it, they are typically put on beware lists through our communities. We deal with children and to have something like that in public, around young ones, we do not see as something that is right to do.

‘Most of this stigma is brought on by articles that don’t know about us at all or television shows like an infamous one, on the series, CSI.



‘As for the rest of us, we mostly wear the costumes to your every day party, charity events, local community events, etc. We are not paid to do so and do it to put a smile on people’s faces. We have our own conventions, just as comicon’s have their events.

‘You’ll typically see a few of us floating around those, as well. In all, we are just a huge group of people who enjoy a bit of fun and we do it just because we can. Each character is depicted by ourselves or a close friend, as an extension of ourselves. For some, when you enter the costume, it brings out a new side of them. For someone who may be meek or shy, they become a bit more adventurous and outgoing.

‘As for me, seeing the blunder threw me into a giggle-fit. I knew something was up when my facebok page started getting loads of new views out of nowhere (for a page that is typically dead for traffic, as I do not normally post a bunch) along with my instagram account having a bunch of new follows.

‘I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is hilarious. This poor bread company had no idea…. why didn’t they check the hashtag prior?”. I then went to their Instagram account to message them there, along with their spokesperson, Tom, as I was still unaware at the time that the whole situation had gone so large so quickly.

‘I then googled a bit and found their site and my heart fell through my butt because I saw they are the UK’s largest bread company.


‘Oh my goodness, it’s been a hilarious situation all around and I hope that going forward, the marketing department makes sure the hashtags or whatever they would like to associate themselves with, is not currently in use.

‘I know I was a bit offended [by the claim] that people came upon my page to a nasty shock. I have nothing entirely lewd listed on any social media aside from a few photos of myself vaping.’

So everyone needs to calm down a bit, really. Yeah?

Oh, and just FYI, only a handful of people have actually entered Warburtons’ competition and all the entries are pretty weak, so if you enter you’ve currently got a high chance of winning.

(Just use the correct hashtag)

The bakers are not the first brand to totally fudge up a hashtag.

Remember when Susan Boyle used the tag #Susanalbumparty to celebrate the release of her album?

Seems like people never learn, as earlier this year Ed Sheeran used his own version of the famous hashtag #Sheeranalbumparty to promote his third album, Divide.

*eye roll*

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