Anytime I'm ordering a cake for an event, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS pick it up late the day before the event for just this reason.

If you leave yourself a little time, you always have options. If you wait til an hour before, then you're stuck with whatever (if ANY) discount they want to give you.

On the other hand, I've ordered several cakes from WalMart, and never had a problem.

Honestly, I always just thought that the photos in the book would simply show you the cheap plastic stuff they put on the cake. I think the cake is perfectly fine (and I honestly doubt the 3 year old cares). If you're going to complain that the cake doesn't look like the photo, have you EVER seen any sort of real food look identical to the picture in the advertisement? I doubt it... There's probably nothing even edible in the photo. I would never expect that someone making minimum wage (or something close to it) to be able to create something equal to what the professionals that crafted the cake in the photo would do.

I agrees with ChrisC1234--the kid is probably just happy to have cake! Save the worrying for when they're older. It is too bad they put the wrong filling in, however; that is something to complain about. I wouldn't trust Wal-Mart with anything requiring more than rudimentary skill if I were, you know, anyone.

I think the multi colored lines that are supposed to be confetti look like bits of tape worm thrown on a cake. Mmmmmmm.

That is a pretty horrendous cake though. Don't people ever bake cakes for their kids anymore? My mom has never bought a cake for me. She's always made me one from scratch and it comes out way better than nasty sheet cakes. It's probably cheaper too. And you can't buy a mommy's love.

I would be more upset at the switch of the buttercream for strawberry. As someone who gets rashes and gastric distress over strawberries, I'm surprised that the store would switch ingredients like that and then be so uncaring about it. I know of many other people whose allergic reactions are more severe than mine are and I cannot imagine that any store would want to invite lawsuits if someone had to go to the hospital over something they ecided to substitute ingredients for.

From my experience, Costco has the best cakes. And theirs look the most like the pictures shown in the book they have. Prices arent too bad either. I've never really been as satisfied with other larger stores ideas of a great cake. Another great place if you're in Chicago is Lutz cafe on Montrose. A bit more pricey but worth it for the special events.

I agree with ediebeale, the cake looks fine, not great, and probably not good enough that I would want to order another cake from them. I would be pretty peeved with the fact that it was strawberry instead of butter cream,

I agree the cake is pretty weak compared to the pic, but if we go by that philosophy, every single chain store/restaurant food-related product EVER would be in the same situation.

And, obvs, if you want high-art bakery stuff, you don't go to Wal-Mart. You go to your local bakery.

@Steve518: That being said, I would have been super-pissed that they got the filling wrong. Even Wal-Mart should get that part right.

Yeah, the cake sucked, but...

A) You bought it at Wal-Mart. Seriously, people, learn that you get what you pay for. You want a fancy cake? Go to a real bakery.

B) The kid was turning 3. Three!! I doubt she cared.

The cake is fine. You ask too much. If you want a great cake, go to a cake shop. Get what you pay for.

I thought it look great and the kid probably did too. If they didn't, they are way to picky and so are the parents.

As demonradio said: bake it yourself, it will taste batter and your kid will appreciate it more knowing you took the time to make it yourself.

Agreed the cake is pretty weak but I doubt a 3-yr old will care, also it's Walmart - what did you expect?

All the more reason to support LOCAL BUSINESS, like a bakery. I can say from experience that, growing up, our local baker's cakes looked nearly dead-on to the "catalog".

My thought is, if the first thing the three year-old did was look down at the cake and say, "Is this supposed to be a film strip, seriously?!" then you have bigger things to worry about then a cake...

As for the filling thing...I'd be a little pissed!

Also, here's to home-made cakes!! :-) MMM!

I have made maybe 12 birthday cakes in my lifetime. I think that at cake #3 (at age 12) I surpassed the level of craftsmanship Walmart gave you. I'm with the people who recommend working with a local baker or baking it yourself. Better yet, bake the cake and frost it--then let your daughter help decorate it with sprinkles (and when she gets a little older, a pastry bag frosting kit). By age 6, she might even be doing a better job than Walmart. The real bonus though, is that your daughter will LOVE it and you'll score a VERY happy family memory.

IMO, the picture is fundamentally the same. The icing swap is a major gaffe, but the decorating looks ok considering it was done by a Wal-Mart employee who probably is not exactly going to have his/her own TV show on Food Network anytime soon.

Frankly I am a little bit impressed. I would have assumed that Wal-Mart has factories that make all of those cakes exactly the same, blast-freezes them for shipping, and someone at the store just thaws it and drops on pre-formed letters for the customization. The fact that the cake appears to have actually been hand-decorated is somewhat surprising.

That said...don't buy cakes at Wal-Mart. Yikes.

As said above, any expectations for a quality cake should be left at the DOOR when you purchase from wal-mart. Seriously. Slap yourself in the face if you expect a high quality cake from WAL-MART.

God. I mean, seriously people. If you're too cheap to pay for a good cake from somewhere, DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT GETTING WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!

The stupidity lately is killing me.

This is a little like the story of the guy who couldn't get raspberry in his overpriced, burnt Starbucks coffee.

Much ado about nothing.

My bridal shower cake came from Costco and was deelicious.

But my cake-of-choice is a Carvel Ice Cream Cake... mmmm-mmm and never screwed up.

I will second Costco's cakes, our mothers 60th cake was from Costco, as have many of ours. But the difference is Costco actually has honest to god bakers and butchers in their stores that are properly trained, which I doubt Wallyworld stores do.

I agree with the above posters -- it's reasonable to be miffed about the filling being switched, but if you want real craftsmanship, go to a "real" bakery. And I'm guessing little Miranda didn't care (unless she has a strawberry allergy).

I'm just glad this wasn't an incredibly long, drawn-out epic like the Starbucks raspberry syrup story. If I had to read such a long, asinine saga on a Monday morning, I might throw myself off a cliff.

Happy Birthday, Miranda!

the cake looks perfectly acceptable; it may not look exactly like the picture, but perfectionists need to shop somewhere besides WalMart. The mix-up in filling is more disappointing, but the excessive complaints about the quality of the decoration say far more about the complainer than about WalMart. (If you're expecting professional, artistic decoration, shop--and be prepared to pay--accordingly.)

Costco's cakes are delish and the only big retailer I'd get a cake from.

Also? The idea of buying a cake at Wal-Mart icks me right out! You get what you pay for, particularly when it takes a certain level of artistry to create a product. If they knew cake decorating? They'd likely be somewhere else and getting paid better for it.

We often hit Sam's Club for a cake...they do a good job. Are they awesome? No. Indeed, it's a demonstration of "you get what you pay for." Are the $50 cakes from the local specialty bakery better? You bet, but $50 for a four year-old's birthday? Nah.

Ditto on homemade cakes.

Don't just avoid cakes at Walmart. Avoid Walmart! It's a hellmouth.

I definitely agree that the mix-up on the filling is unacceptable -- not only because filling really isn't open to interpretation, but also because so many people have strawberry allergies.

However, he got what he paid for. The Wal-Mart cake is clearly frosted and decorated with butter cream, along with the plastic Mickey Mouse and Happy Birthday pieces. The cake in the picture appears to be frosted and mostly decorated with something else (Fondant? Marzipan? I'm just an amateur, but it's too smooth and perfect to be butter cream). Something tells me the Wal-Mart cake was advertised as a butter cream cake, because most el cheapo sheet cakes have no pretensions of being anything else. Decorating with butter cream is no easy task -- definitely not something a person making Wal-Mart wages is going to be able to pull off unless they have previous experience elsewhere (in which case, why are they working at Wal-Mart?). I'll agree that it's a crap decorating job, but it pretty much meets my expectations as to what a Wal-Mart sheet cake would look like.

Go to a real bakery next time and support a local merchant. It will look better and taste better and probably won't come with inedible decorations. My birthday was yesterday too, and my cake was as specified, local, and delicious. Yum!

Next up: Big Mac doesn't look like it does in the commercial.

Next time go with Fudgie the Whale.

The cake looks like a lot of time went into it, not the three days that the photo cake took, but real time and energy anyway. For Wal-Mart, that is impressive.

Don't expect quality from Walmart. It's the golden rule to live by.

If you were expecting a masterpiece for your $8.97 birthday cake, I feel sorry for you.

Oh god... this reminds me of my brothers 12th birthday.

My mom had bought a batman cake at the local Giant Eagle and had it personalized. Well the cake had a night scene on it in addition to the batman toy they placed on top so my mother requested the phrase "Happy Birthday Michael" be written in the yellow circle that was the moon on the night scene to make it look like the bat signal. The woman put on the paper for the customization: Happy Birthday Michael (in the moon).

We go pick up the cake on my brother's birthday, and when it's time to open it to stick in the candles we look at it and realize there has been some miscommunication...

"Happy Birthday Michael (in the moon)"

was literally written on the cake in black icing. Instead of taking the parenthesis as instructions the lady who did the cake wrote the whole thing out and didn't consider it an instruction.

You'd think it would behoove a bakery to think the phrase "(in the moon)" would be some sort of instruction or barring that call the person that paid for the cake and ask for clarification on such a nonsense phrase being added to the cake.

But given that it was over 10 years ago, we don't have any pictures or anything to show this screw up for the enjoyment of all of you here.

Apparently, Maghann and Ben don't always use "we".

Happy Birthday Miranda!! Hope your cranky parents didn't ruin it

The star, streamers, letters, and filmstrip may not be as pictured, but Miranda got purple dots and Mickey Mouse sprinkles, which, to a three-year-old is probably more than a fair trade.

No excuse for the filling, though. Allergies aside, the icing is cosmetic, but if you screw up the filling the taste of the cake is altered. To continue the Big Mac analogy: screwing up the filling is like ordering a Big Mac and getting chicken.

Even though it is not quite as advertised. I think it looks like a good birthday cake, though they should have given you a bigger discount because of the mistake with the filling.

I feel qualified to post on this topic since I used to decorate cakes (poorly) in the bakery I worked in in high school and my Daughter is also named Miranda....

I think the top picture actually looks better. The bottom pic just doesn't look edible to me. The top picture seems happier, a little more of the Disney magic maybe. I actually think its an improvement, so you got a better deal (IMO).

Working with Butter Cream icing like I did those many years ago, I would have to say they did a pretty decent job.

Does anyone else think this is a little overblown, to be submitted to Consumerist? Now, if the lawyer of Wal-Mart contacted the cake man and demanded him to stop yelling about Wal-Mart's cakes on Consumerist, then THAT'S a story!

This is just some pissed off Dad in high class suburbia who didn't get what his wife said they would get.

I knew this would happen when Walmart let go of their world class pastry chefs. Oh wait...

For my older sister's birthday one year we got her a cake that said "Does This Cake Make My Butt Look Big?" because she would ask us that whenever she put on an outfit. We thought it was hilarious, but the lady at Publix didn't seem too happy to do it. We convinced her otherwise!

This anecdote has no bearing on the above article, though if you live in the south Publix has a pretty sweet bakery, and it seems consistent at all the stores I've been to.

It's really not as awful as I would expect to come out of Wal-Mart, and like everyone said, she's 3 and will only see Mickey Mouse and colors. I've actually wondered what cakes turn out like when you order one from a picture in a catalog - guess I know now. Cake decorating is a skill and can be very time-consuming, depending on the look your going for. Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart is hiring skilled decorators to man the bakery. Next time you're looking for perfection, look beyond minimum wage workers.

The deal breaker for me on this though is the strawberry filling. I would be really, really pissed if I got a different flavor than what I ordered. Although I think she got lucky that the cake wasn't covered in fondant like it seems to be in the picture (as someone pointed out). Personally, I think fondant tastes nasty, although it does make for a pretty cake.

Oh. My. God.

Do you think the three year old daughter can read her name? Do you think she cares that the squiggles were applied by a crackhead? She will probably just stick her hands in the damn thing and throw globs of HFCF-laden Walmart cake on the partygoers. Please stop whining about these trivial things, people. We are so spoiled....

er.. HFCS (high fructose corn syrup)

I have to say that I disagree with the folks that say you shouldn't expect quality because it's Wal-Mart.

That being said, I'd have a much bigger problem with the Strawberry than the quality of the cake. Yeah it doesn't look exactly like the picture, but Jesus Christ, it's a picture. Have you ever gotten any food that looks like the picture?

It's supposed to be a representative sample, not an exact representation of the product. Independent bakeries do a better job. Throw the money to the local guy. It'll be worth it in the end.

When my sister turned 10, she wanted a cake from a bakery, up to that point my mother had always made our birthday cakes herself. So a cake with pink frosting and ballerinas was ordered. On the way home, my sister somehow managed to sit on the cake, crushing it. Mom managed to restore the damage, but when the candles were lit, my sis took too long deciding on her wish, and the ballerinas caught on fire.
On her 30th birthday, we got my sister a cake from the same bakery, purposefully squished it, and set the ballerinas on fire. What does this have to do with the above story? noting, I just want you to know how crazy my family is.

When did Wal-Mart start selling cakes? Is there anything that stupid store won't sell? And wouldn't it be easier just to go to a bakery?

The way the cake looks has a lot more to do with who is decorating cakes at that Walmart location than with the fact that it's a Walmart.

I worked in a bakery in college, and it employed a staff of four cake decorators and two assistants. After they left, those of us working the counter in the evenings would go into the cake room and practice roses and borders for kicks. Any one of us counter clerks could have done a better job with that cake - it obviously wasn't done by a professional decorator.

Whenever possible, patronize your local bakery. It's likely that you'll be able to see a portfolio of their work. If you're picking out a cake from a booklet full of licensed characters, know that those examples were not made on-site, but by the company selling the plastic gee-gaws decorating them.

People are very emotional about the cakes they order for special occasions. I've seen customers in tears over the wrong shade of blue! The reaction to the poor decorations likely had little to do with the three-year-old and more with Mom's wish for a perfect party.

I'm reminded of when I was 5-6 I went to a bakery with my parents to get a cake, as I was visiting relatives at the time. Apparently when I said "Nathan" they thought I said "Jason" and so even after confirmation by my parents, the cake that emerged a couple days later had a distinct "Happy Birthday Jason!" on it.

They gave the cake to us for free, and I couldn't have cared less. A cake is a cake, especially when you're just complaining about the frosting...the flavors on the other hand, that's a completely separate matter.

There's no way I'd accept this cake. Although it's a similar concept, the design's substantially different:
* The film strip bows up first rather than bowing down
* The overall cake color is white rather than yellow
* The letters are all one color rather than multiple colors

The experts in what can and cannot be done with frosting should be those working in the bakery department. If the customer requests butter cream frosting and a design that can't be matched with butter cream frosting, it's the bakery's responsibility to communicate that to the customer when the order is placed.

I'm sorry, I couldn't really see anything wrong with the cake. It looked fine. Maybe I'm not a cake connosieur like you, but it looked perfectly edible and actually quite tasty looking. Not so terrible that it would warrant a Consumerist alert.

Because...wait for it...you bought a CAKE at WAL-MART! What did you expect?! An intricate tiered cake?

It looks like the box.

Try buying your next cake from a pastry shop instead of freekin Walmart you cheapskate.

The cake looks fine. I've picked up several from Sam's Club (walmart warehouse) that tasted great! Way better than Costco (my previous favorite). And you can't come close to the price, even making it from scratch.

I used to work at baskin robbins and NOTHING we made came close to the pictures. Never did we receive complaints.

The pictures are meant as a visual aid, not a guarantee. If you want something professional grade, go to a professional source. When you buy from chain locations you're buying it for the taste or the cheapness, not how it looks.

@Aaron Pratt: "There's no way I'd accept this cake. Although it's a similar concept, the design's substantially different:
* The film strip bows up first rather than bowing down
* The overall cake color is white rather than yellow
* The letters are all one color rather than multiple colors"

My God people, are you for real?

Anyone want to bet 9.97 that there's some kind of fine print in that cake book that says "actual cake may vary from photographs" or something like that?

Gee whiz, people. Be reasonable. It's a ten dollar birthday cake.