Iceland Branded ‘Irresponsible’ For Sending Leaflets Advertising ‘Fat Bastard’ Wine To Schools

Iceland has been branded ‘irresponsible’, after the high street supermarket sent leaflets featuring a wine called ‘Fat Bastard’ to primary schools.

The low cost chain sent more than 175,000 leaflets to schools and homes in October last year - and has now been slammed by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The advert said: ‘outrageous name, outrageously good wine’, alongside the wine’s controversial name.

But the advert prompted an investigation after the ASA received four complaints.

Iceland have since claimed that the wine’s name reflected its full bodied nature - and the small number of complaints reflected the actual lack of offence towards it.

They added that the advert was sent in error to schools - and it has since been banned by the ASA.

The ASA said: ‘We noted that the ad had been delivered to the primary school in error, and in any case considered that it was unlikely that children at the school would have seen it.

‘We considered, however, that a circular distributed to homes in an untargeted manner was likely to be seen by young children, and noted that the references to ‘FAT bastard’ appeared on the outside where they were immediately visible.

‘Notwithstanding that we considered the language in the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence, we considered that the references to ‘FAT bastard’ were unsuitable to be seen by young children and should not have featured on the outside covers of the circulars. We concluded the ad had been irresponsibly targeted.’

They added: ‘The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Iceland Foods Ltd to ensure that language which was unsuitable for children to see was not displayed on the outside cover of future circulars.’