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(2.22.05) Lost in Process
Challenge Theme: "The animal cracker that didn't make it in the box."

Notes:
Medium: Photoshop 7.0.
Reference: None.

Article text:

Animal cracker recall
Woman’s complaint pursuades company to recall recent animal crackers.
By Raymond Fero

Only days after Mockers, the imitation animal cracker manufacturer, introduced its highly anticipated new animal cracker design, the new cracker has been discontinued and the boxes have been recalled from store shelves, following a series of complaints initiated by a Wisconsan school teacher.

The new design, representing a coiled cobra, was introduced only last Monday in a nationwide advertising campaign, and Mockers was almost immediately inundated with customer complaints, claiming the new animal cracker design too closely resembled a male genetalia. Jenna Parker, the fourth grade teacher who initiated the first complaints against the company recalls: "My daughter got a box of crackers from her friend. She offered one of the crackers to me, and I was shocked. I just couldn't believe what she was eating." Roy Feno, the concept artist behind the new cracker's design explains that "I didn't see any possibility for confusion. I've always been fascinated by snake charmers, and a cobra seemed to be a natural addition to the animal crackers. Obviously, in this case, something was lost between the stages of conceptualization and implementation."

"Yeah, sure we thought it was kind of odd," reports one of the quality assurance operators, "but it's not our place to question the cookies, we just make them." Parker is considering suing the company for emotional damages and extensive psychiatric costs for both herself and her daughter. "There is no excuse such an obvious sexual reference to be hidden in our children's cookies," Parker states. "The emotional trauma caused to my daughter and myself cannot be undone."

Since the introduction of the cracker, it has gained an unfounded popularity among online communities. Recently, one of the recalled crackers was sold for over $213 on the online auction site, E-bay, and some have speculated if the simplistically designed cobra might not have been just an elaborate guerrilla marketing technique. Company spokespersons have refused to comment on such speculation.