Toy ad slips past proofreaders

Deirdre Armon, an avid Scrabble player, was horrified to discover how the famous board game was being advertised in her local circular.

A Caldor department store ad included a photograph of two boys sitting around a Scrabble board with the word "RAPE" spelled out in tiles arranged vertically."I was just shocked that that was allowed to slip through the cracks," said Armon, the mother of two girls. "To see it go out in a flier especially for toys, that made it even more gruesome."

Caldor apologized Tuesday for the mistake and said it does not know how 11 million copies of the image - in which the word "RAPE" appeared on the board alongside two nonsense words - got past proofreaders.

The Norwalk-based discount chain learned of the problem late Friday when a customer called to complain about the toy ad, which appeared in a special toy circular distributed in weekend news-papers.

"Obviously, it's a mistake," said Caldor spokeswoman Jennifer Belodeau. "It's not something that we would ever have done intentionally. While we do proofread these things very carefully, with the volume on that particular page, that was something that was missed."

The "1998 Toy Book," a 44-page color circular advertising a two-week toy sale at Caldor, was distributed as an insert to 85 newspapers in the Northeast, where Caldor operates 145 stores.

Milton Bradley Co., which makes Scrabble, said it had not seen the ad until after it was produced and distributed by Caldor.