Subway for illiterates

This story has been going around the blogs a bit in the last day or so, so I thought I might mention it here:

The Subway sandwich chain is running a writing contest for kids from which homeschooled kids are specifically excluded. Excluding a potential one million customers seems pretty dumb to start with but the stupidity does not end there. In their promo they write (down the very bottom) of the "Untied" States and homeschoolers are described as "home schools". Note that there was another misspelling too: "bastket".

And to top it off it is pre-schoolers that they are asking to compose sentences. A bit ambitious! See here and here for more.

So why did they do it? I think Bob McCarty has the best explanation.

Update:

As I had had a small eye operation only a few hours before I wrote the above, I could not see very well and missed a couple of things (funnily enough). Now corrected.

Jerry Lerman has grabbed a copy of the original promo in case they wake up long enough to correct the original. See here. You may have to use the resize gadget to enlarge the pic. Jerry has highlighted the bloopers in red.


Posted by John Ray.