You Can Stick It!

The run-up to a World Cup is a time when children (and nostalgic adults) start collecting football stickers and cards. However, the launch of the 2018 World Cup sticker album has been met with fury by some on social media after it was revealed that the price of a 5-pack of stickers had increased by 60% to 80p. And fans have reacted furiously to the news that there has been a 30p increase in a pack of five from the price of stickers 4 years ago. According to reports, there are around 700 players in the sticker album, plus managers, stadiums and other extras with reports suggesting it would cost around £600 to complete the entire album. Indeed, this year, a sticker costs 16p each with packs remaining the same size. The company’s 2014 World Cup album was its biggest-selling ever worldwide, with British collectors buying in huge numbers. Total sales from the album were an estimated £3.5m.

ASOS Typo

Success isn’t about never making mistakes – it’s about how you recover from them. Take note from ASOS, who, yes, messed up, but recovered in a brilliant way. ASOS managed to print 17,000 packaging bags with a rather prominent typo on them. Their slogan, ‘discover fashion online’, had the word ‘onilne’ instead of ‘online’. Not exactly what you want when you’re positioning yourself as a massive digital fashion brand that knows all about tech-y stuff. Being unable to handle a keyboard does make people doubt your abilities. Now, ASOS could have pretended this hadn’t happened. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, right? And any snarky tweets about the brand’s spelling could have been ignored. ASOS could have issued an apology and moved on. But instead they decided to use their mistake to their advantage. ‘Ok, so we *may* have printed 17,000 bags with a typo,’ ASOS tweeted. ‘We’re calling it a limited edition.’

ASOS Typo

Fortnite

Fortnite Battle Royale has officially reached craze status. As a free-to-play game, however, downloads and players don't translate directly into sales -- players have to spend money on in-game cosmetic items for developer Epic Games to make a profit. A new report from SuperData estimates that people are indeed doing that in droves, and also that Fortnite has now surpassed chief rival PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Superdata estimates that Fortnite Battle Royale beat PUBG in terms of total revenue in February with $126 million compared to PUBG's $103 million, though it's unclear how Superdata arrived at those numbers. But despite the similar gameplay, there are some important differences on who can play these games and how they pay for them. Fortnite is free-to-play across PS4, Xbox One and PC, and is currently in a pilot program on iOS with Android to follow. PUBG is a $29.99 purchase on PC and Xbox One.

Fortnite

Flippy

Flippy the burger-flipping robot that started work this week in a California restaurant has been forced to take a break because it was too slow. The robot was installed at a Cali Burger outlet in Pasadena and replaced human cooks. But after just one day at work the robot has been taken offline so it can be upgraded to work faster. Its human helpers are also getting extra training to help the robot keep up with demand. In a statement Miso Robotics, which made Flippy, said it was testing the code that controls the robot to ensure that it can cook quickly enough to fulfil orders at peak times. Prior to starting work, Flippy was said to be capable of cooking up to 2,000 burgers a day. Cali said that it started to use the robot to get around the problems it has recruiting staff. The high turnover rate among staff in fast-food restaurants meant it often spent time and money training people to prepare food only to have them leave after a few months. Eventually, said the chain, burger-flipping robots will be installed in up to 50 of its restaurants.

Flippy

Change Please

For the last two years, London-based social enterprise Change Please has demonstrated a radically different way of doing things, and now it’s beginning to scale up rapidly to take on the industry’s really big names. For a start, all of its cups are 100 per cent recyclable. Its beans also come from farms that support local communities. One supplier in Peru helps victims of domestic abuse, while another in Tanzania supports people injured by landmines.  When the beans get to the UK, people who have been sleeping on the streets roast them and are also trained as baristas to work at the company’s 17 locations. Change Please pays the London Living Wage, currently £10.20 per hour, and provides help with opening bank accounts, housing, therapy and assistance with onward employment. All profits are put back into helping to reduce homelessness.

Change Please

Walkers 70th Birthday

Walkers is set to celebrate its 70th anniversary with a range of flavours inspired by every decade it has been making crisps. The crisp company are recreating the classic flavours from the UK’s favourite dishes of decades gone by. The flavours from the last six decades are: coronation chicken (1950s), roast lamb and mint (1960s), cheese fondue (1970s), chicken tikka masala (1980s), BBQ ribs (1990s) and sweet chilli (2000s).Walkers was founded in Leicester in 1948 by Englishman Henry Walker. The company started making crisps after World War II to keep customers satisfied while meat rationing took meat off the table. Rachel Holms from Walkers said: “To have been a household name in homes up and down the country for the last 70 years is a remarkable achievement.”

Walkers Birthday Range

World's Most Expensive Chocolate

The world’s most expensive chocolate went on display at a chocolate fair in Obidos in Portugal on Friday. Priced at 7,728 euros ($9,489) and covered in edible gold, the chocolate is part of a limited edition of 1,000 bonbons. It has a filling of saffron threads, white truffle, vanilla from Madagascar and gold flakes. It was guarded by two uniformed men. Its creator, Portuguese chocolatier Daniel Gomes, said the diamond-shaped chocolate was certified as the world’s most expensive by the Guinness Book of Records, which in 2017 listed $250 La Madeline au Truffe made by Danish artisan chocolate-maker Fritz Knipschildt’s as the record holder. Its crown-shaped box is decorated with 5,500 Swarovksi crystals and also carries personalized pincers.

Expensive Chocolate