Australia Day 2016: Coles Toowong Southern Cross flag fail

IT SEEMS when it comes to Australia Day merchandise, the nation’s leading supermarket chains just can’t get things right.

Days after Woolworths came under fire for selling an Australia Day cap that left Tasmania off our nation’s map, its main rival Coles has made an embarrassing merchandise blunder of its own.

A Coles supermarket in Toowong, southwest of Brisbane, has proudly draped huge Australian flags over its produce section in time for Tuesday’s national celebrations, but it doesn’t take a genius to notice a critical flaw in the design — the Southern Cross is backwards.

A snap of the faulty flags, which appear to bear the Southern Cross in mirror-image, was taken by customer Mark Whistler and uploaded to Coles’ Facebook page.

“Well done Coles ... what a complete corporate fail,” he said.

“You obviously had one of your “Choice” overseas sweat shop suppliers produce these flags, but then you compound the fail by having your employees hang them (and for Australia Day as well).”

Coles addressed the blunder in a reply comment, saying “sorry for the mix-up”.

“The issue was with a single set of flags in one of our stores which have now all been removed,” the comment continued.

Another shopper at the Toowong store was quick to notice the error.

“The stars are the wrong way around ya dingus,” customer Tomas commented on his own photograph of the cringe-worthy flags uploaded on Facebook.

“Whoops! Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Tomas,” Coles responded.

Meanwhile, Woolworths has said it would pull from sale an Australia Day-themed hat emblazoned with an outline of Australia that omitted Tasmania.

“Woolworths is aware of the issue and in the process of withdrawing the product from our supermarket shelves,” a statement from the company read.

And that wasn’t the first time Tasmania was forgotten by designers. Swimmers competing in the Commonwealth Games in 2014 were sent into the pool with swimsuits stamped with a Tassie-free Australia.

“I hope that it was an oversight and not deliberate. Tasmania also disappeared from Olympic medals and posters for Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia, so it’s very disappointing that the same oversight has happened a number of times,” Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie said at the time.

In a statement on Monday, a Coles spokesman clarified that the dodgy flags were not Coles’ merchandise. “Coles has confirmed that all of our Australia Day merchandise including Australian flags are correctly designed,” he said.

“The incorrect flags which were displayed at a single store were purchased by a team member from a local retailer. Our team removed the flags from display as soon as the incorrect design was pointed out.”

ncG1vNJzZmimlazAb6%2FOpmWarV%2Bbtq%2BtzZycaJqlqLavsdKsZqudpJa2rXvCqKOeq12ZsqS70Zqrnqtdl7%2Bqv8GapZ5lo6m8s7HSZq6irJhir7DAwqGcnWWRqsC1vsCloJqmXZu5orPSaKWer6NiwLW70bJmb2plZn14sZecb5tqaGyFonzEmnCcb5ZrgKayk5tpnnE%3D