When you’re setting up a 4th of July barbecue in a couple of weeks, you might want to make sure none of the kids or sensitive souls nearby scan the QR code on the Heinz ketchup. That’s because, thanks to an expired promotion, the site it leads to isn’t fun ketchup marketing… it’s hardcore porn.

A German man discovered the issue when he scanned the code this month, The Independent reports. He expected to be taken to Heinz’s site for designing your own label and, instead, ended up somewhere much more adult.

The promotion, it turns out, had been designed to run from 2012 through 2014 — and when it ended, Heinz let the domain name registration lapse. But it didn’t go inactive: a different company snapped it up, for a different purpose entirely.

The man who discovered the error posted on Facebook (in German and blurred but probably not work-safe), “Your ketchup really isn’t for under-age people. Even if the bottle was a leftover, it’s still in lots of households. It’s incomprehensible that you didn’t reserve the domain for one or two years. It really doesn’t cost the Earth.”

Heinz, of course, apologized, responding (also on Facebook), “We really regret the event very much and we’re happy to take your suggestions for how we implement future campaigns on board.” The ketchup company also offered him a free bottle of ketchup with his own custom label design.

The pornography company also left a comment, offering him a free one-year subscription to their site.

Heinz forced to apologise after QR code on ketchup bottle linked to hardcore porn site [The Independent via The Verge]

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