I thought you might find this case interesting.
On our way back to north, we stopped at an inaugural Vääksy Antique Fair. A popular event from the start, as you may witness from the photo attached.
At the fair, I came across this British Airways Air Stewardess doll made by Rexard Dolls in the late Seventies - early Eighties.
What caught my eye was a couple of text passages in Latin on the backside of the box, starting with "Lorem ipsum dolor sit nonnomy..." and followed by "ullamcorpor suscipit lab..." on the lower part of the box.
Is British Airways trying to promote Latin as a high-altitude lingua franca? How odd and exciting!
Unfortunately, the answer is quite mundane - and therefore twice as exciting!
Lorem ipsum is a long textual passage of corrupted Latin, a kind of gibberish used by graphic designers as a placeholder for texts to be added later on. In other words, lorem ipsum passages should never end up in final products, as they are only indicating the place where the proper text should be added.
Ergo, the box embodies a significant lapse in quality control - a veritable lapsus linguae one could say!
Do you recall a similar case readers?
Quite unique I would think. I find these kinds of unintentional lapses or errors most interesting - and collectable too!
This last picture is from eBay showing a later, corrected edition of the box back.
Arto
Helsinki Base
