The Sprout network from PBS has been a family favorite in our household since my kids were still toddlers.  Every night Nina and Star were a part of our nightly routing, and at the end of the Goodnight Show we’d sing the Lullaby song together.

Now six years old, the kids have pretty much outgrown Sprout but my wife and I still follow the network on social media outlets because they often post interesting crafts, and cool contests that are still pretty age appropriate for my kids.  To ring in the holiday season, Sprout has kicked off a “Merrython” on Facebook.  It’s a 21 day celebration with prizes, games, and treats.  I had picked up on the campaign a few days ago and was just introducing it to my wife this evening.  As she pulled up the page, she gasped and I didn’t quite understand why.  But after looking a tad bit closer, I saw what triggered the reaction.

In Day 3 of the campaign you are greeted with a message to unwrap a virtual gift within the window on Facebook.  The message reads, “UNWRAP this merry gift to see if you’ve won GRUFFALO MERCHANDISE. (And by unwrap we mean click.)  An innocent enough message when you read it here, but if you look at it in live on the site the font choice used by Sprout actually conveys another message…

Needless to say the font choice used by Sprouts designers and/or marketing team was not ideal.  Something tells me this gift was intended for someone on the “naughty list.”