Nicola Pritchard, who lives in Staffordshire, UK, is now calling on the retailer to remove what she believes are ‘sexually inappropriate’ children’s knickers from its shelves.
The mother of three had bought a four-pack of girls’ underwear from Poundland’s Pepco range for her 10-year-old daughter, paying just under $4 (£2.50) for the pack.
Nicola looked it up and said she was completely shocked once she found out what it actually translated to.
She later learned that the text translated to either ‘pussycat’ or ‘cat’ in both Chinese and Japanese.
That’s when she decided to reach out to the store and make a formal complaint about what she saw as an unsuitable design for kids.
The company responded by saying the pack was part of a wider cat-themed collection inspired by Japanese designs, but added they could see why the symbol might seem out of place in this situation.
Nicola explained: “I had previously bought some knickers for my daughter with a different design and she had said how comfortable they were.”
“None of them had anything to do with Japanese symbols apart from this random one in the pack.”
“When I took them home, she asked me ‘What does this mean Mum?’ I said ‘I don’t know, I didn’t notice it’.”
“If the pants had anything to do with cats, like pictures of cats or something like that that would be fine but there’s no correlation as to why this symbol should be on there, especially on children’s pants.” she added.
“I was absolutely gobsmacked. These [even] come in ages three to four in Poundland.”
“It seemed like they weren’t taking this seriously at all.” she said. “The fact that these are on girls’ knickers is baffling. How it was able to get through production, I can’t get my head round how it managed to get through and to sale.”
“It’s got no place on children’s knickers. I think there’s sexual connotations to it. It’s not even the proper name for cat, it’s the slang name.”
“The idea that that’s printed on the front of knickers for children turns my stomach.”
Nicola went on to say: “I don’t think they’ve done it intentionally.”
“It goes without saying we apologise for that, and we appreciate her getting in touch with us.”