‘Hitler kettle’ sales boil over
JCPenney’s product wasn’t selling particularly well, until the ostensibly dictatorial likeness was noticed
A tea kettle that resembles Adolf Hitler has sold out online.
Retailer JC Penney came under fire earlier this week for advertising and selling the space-saving tea kettle, designed by American architect Michael Graves.
The tea kettle and it resemblance to Hitler caught the attention of commuters near Culver City, Calif., who drove past a 10-foot-tall billboard of the appliance. Photos of the kettle and criticism of it then spread rapidly on social media sites including Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
The tea kettle had sold out on-line on the JC Penney website by Tuesday afternoon.
Its photo has been removed from the site. The company also removed the billboard following the Memorial Day weekend.
The company insists that any resemblance to Hitler is purely coincidental. “If we had designed it to look like something, we would have gone with a snowman or something fun :),” the company tweeted.
The “Hitler kettle” follows in the dubious tradition of the Hitler cat and the Hitler house in brewing up an Internet storm over an ostensible likeness to the Nazi dictator.
The kettle’s handle, cap and spout, purportedly resemble the Führer’s do, mustache and arm outstretched in salute.
“Wow it even looks like it’s beginning a nazi salute. Weird,” wrote “dloburns,” a user on the popular website Reddit.
“I think it’s that black reflection on the body that really makes it Hitleresque. Resembles a tie too much,” wrote another user.
Prior to the Hitler storm-in-a-tea-kettle, the product itself, priced at $40, had garnered mixed reviews and failed to make a significant dent in the ever-expanding tea paraphernalia market.
A photo of the kettle from its product page on the JCPenney website leads us to believe that the likeness is probably due to the angle from which the billboard is viewed and the fact that the picture of it was a little blurry.
