Ikea Wolf Toy Gets Renamed in China After Old One Deemed Vulgar

December 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Ikea Wolf Toy Gets Renamed in China After Old One Deemed Vulgar

Ikea changed the Chinese name of its stuffed wolf toy because the earlier version sounded like a vulgarity in Cantonese, after the toy became a symbol of government opposition in Hong Kong. The new name of the plush toy wolf from the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale contains the Chinese character for “good fortune.” The earlier name sounded like a vulgar anatomical reference in the Cantonese dialect which uses the same characters as Mandarin but pronounces them differently.The previous translation “was unfortunate,” Ikea said in a statement issued through Edelman Public Relations Worldwide. “This has now been corrected.”

Protesters threw the toy wolf at Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, whose popularity is near a record low, at a forum on Dec. 7. Leung has been dubbed “Wolf Chun-ying” by newspapers critical of his policies, and the toy is sold out at all three Ikea stores in Hong Kong, according to an inventory search on the company’s website. The toy is listed as “not in stock” at 11 of 14 of Ikea’s stores in China, according to the website.

Leung posted a picture of himself with the toy wolf, which retails for HK$99.9 ($13) and is called Lufsig in other languages, on his official blog.“Hong Kong people’s creativity has no limits,” he said in the blog post.

Leung has a support rating of 42 on a scale of 0 to 100, according to a University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Programme survey conducted from Dec. 3 to 5.

The wolf is part of Ikea’s new soft toys range, which is “inspired by the European fairy tale tradition,” the company said in its statement. The wolf, clad in a red-checked shirt and blue pants, clutches a doll of an old woman.

“Your child can have fun recreating the fairytale by rescuing the grandmother from the wolf’s belly, safe and sound,” Ikea’s website says.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Lee in Hong Kong at slee936@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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