Give It A Few More Years, And No-one Will Even Notice....

They seemed the perfect toys to teach inquisitive young minds the basics of the ABC.

Unfortunately, even a child could spot something was seriously wrong with the set of alphabet building blocks.

The block for 'U' was marked with the word 'umberlla' under a colourful brolly, while the side for 'Y' had a boat sailing over the word 'yatch'.

A third face had some creative punctuation, with 'X' standing for X'mas tree.

They originate, of course, from China. The mother who spotted the errors was incensed:

'There are only 26 words on these blocks,' said Mrs Toulson, a tax manager. 'You'd think they'd be able to get them all right.'

Actually, three out of twenty-six isn't a bad hit rate when you are a peasent worker toiling to produce a foreighn language toy for mere pennies a day.

Consider the 'comments' column in any online newspaper - this one Laban Tall points to is a good example.

Suddenly those blocks don't look too out of place after all, do they?