Heinz Very, Very Sorry for Link to German Porn Site on Ketchup Bottle
Theoretically, an incorrect hyperlink could point to any random place on the internet, from Sonic fan art forums to Fusion.com. In practice, however, they only link to porn, porn and slightly weirder porn, as was recently the case with an unusually saucy bottle of Heinz hot ketchup.
Thanks to the unnamed cosmic law of accidental porn links, Daniel Korell of Germany found himself on camgirl site Fundorado after scanning the promotional QR code on a Heinz bottle. From The Local:
Heinz’s ownership of the website for the contest, which ran between 2012 and 2014, had since expired. The bottle was a leftover which had only been filled with ketchup and sold after the contest was over.
Porn site Fundorado had jumped into the gap and registered Heinz’s former address for itself, meaning that Heinz’s defunct shortcut now pointed to a page full of graphic thumbnail images linking to porn videos.
After Korell alerted Heinz to their mistake via social media, the ketchup maker issued a hasty apology, writing, “we really regret the event very much.”
Fundorado, on the other hand, has turned the error into a promotional tool of their own, proudly running a banner on their site reading, “JA, DAS ORIGINAL VON DER KETCHUP FLASCHE!”