Musician Jan Delay (46) made an unpleasant discovery on New Year's Eve. He was speechless "when the host's little daughter read these 'jokes' from our crackers last night," he wrote on Twitter on New Year's Day, adding: "What kind of misogynist shit is that please? For children over 3? Happy 1953." In addition, the singer published two photos of the sayings.

"When my wife starts singing, I always go out so the neighbors can see that I don't hit them," it says. "Why are there women's parking spaces in the car parks? - So that the women don't damage the men's cars when parking!" Was the second slogan. The tweet triggered outrageous reactions on Twitter, and other users also published notes with other supposed jokes.

The fireworks company Weco has since apologized in a statement. "We regret that these cracker slogans have circulated and at this point we can only agree that the content presented is neither funny, tasteful nor up-to-date," the January 2 statement explains. We would like to expressly apologize to all people "who feel insulted or attacked by the texts. We reject discrimination in any form."

The same problem with individual sayings was already confronted five years ago, and all textual content was then extensively revised, it is said. These sayings have always not been processed in the latest production batches of the past few years. The fact that these crackers are still sporadically appearing on the market today is due to "the fact that we can no longer get individual market batches of these goods back due to the complexity of the market," says the manufacturer. "A sorting out is and was therefore no longer possible, since these 'old' goods, like many other fireworks, were and are distributed via a large network of intermediaries."