Banging your head against your desk because you sent an uncorrected proof to press? Cheer up: it might be a blessing in disguise! After all, printing mistakes have been known to become collector’s items — and even start new fashions.

We looked at printing errors that sparked creative trends in a previous article; this time we bring you amusing anecdotes about misprints from the world of pop culture.

Did you know that The Incredible Hulk is green because of a  printing glitch? Or that, according to legend, the All Blacks – New Zealand’s mighty national rugby team – are so named due to a misunderstanding between a journalist and printer? Or that there is a Wicked Bible with a typo that changes the meaning of the seventh commandment?

Inconsistent colour: the reason why Hulk is green

In 1962, Marvel tasked writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby with creating a character that looked like Frankenstein, action figures of which were flying off the shelves at the time.

They came up with  Hulk, the muscle-bound alter-ego of a weedy and nerdy scientist. Their creation was an instant hit, winning over fans around the world. But what makes this Marvel character instantly recognisable is the colour of his skin: bright green!

Yet Hulk was supposed to be grey, having been inspired by the shadowy Mr Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Hulk does indeed appear grey in the first issue published on 1 May 1962. But the limitations of printing technology at the time and the poor quality of paper used made it hard to maintain colour uniformity: as a result, Hulk changed colour from grey to blue in the same comic!

For subsequent issues, Hulk’s colour was changed to one better suited to the printing process and paper used: green.

The Lego printing errors coveted by collectors

Some brands are famous for their quality control. One of these is Lego, the Danish maker of colourful play bricks. Every item leaving the Lego factory undergoes meticulous inspection to weed out manufacturing errors, such as misshapen and unusable pieces or characters with misprinted graphics.

But, as we all know, everyone makes mistakes, and even Lego’s strict quality controllers miss things sometimes. And on the vanishingly rare occasions that printing errors make it onto the market, the pieces in question become instant collector’s items that can be worth hundreds of pounds.

Much sought after by collectors are misprinted Lego Star Wars characters, like the Chewbacca with his face printed on his back or stomach, in a clear case of misaligned printing. Also highly prized are figures with two faces and stormtroopers mistakenly printed as sportspeople.

Could one of these unique pieces be hiding in your Lego collection?

The Bible with the wrong commandment

Misprinting a piece of Lego in the 21st century is suboptimal, but misprinting a Bible in the 17th century is something else entirely. Especially if this error means one of the ten commandments says the opposite to what it should.

That’s exactly what happened with the infamous Wicked Bible, also known as the Adulterous Bible or the Sinners’ Bible. In some copies of the holy book printed in London in 1631, there’s an apparently innocuous typo – a missing “not”. Unfortunately, it was omitted from one of the ten commandments, leading it to erroneously read: Thou shalt commit adultery!

About a thousand copies of the Wicked Bible were published and they circulated freely until the error was noticed a year later. The printers responsible had the book (figuratively) thrown at them: they were hit with a hefty fine and their printing licence was revoked. Most offending copies were destroyed at the time, but there are still few remaining today, which are worth thousands of pounds.

Harry Potter and the Wrong Author’s Name

As loyal readers will know, we’re big fans of book cover design on this blog and  we recently dedicated an entire post to Harry Potter covers. J. K. Rowling’s debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was first published in 1997 and has sold over 120 million copies since, making it one of the bestselling books of all time.

However, there are about 200 early proof copies out there with a major typo: the author’s name is misspelt as JA Rowling on the title page.

While at the end of the nineties these could be picked up for pennies from London’s second-hand book dealers, in early 2024 a copy was sold at auction for 11,000 pounds!

Dord! The ghost word in the dictionary

How many times is a dictionary revised before going to press? Many, especially if it’s an authority on the English language like the one produced by Merriam-Webster, the oldest and most respected dictionary publisher in America.

Yet it was at Merriam-Webster that one day, 90 years ago, something went awry and a made-up word found its way into the dictionary.

It was 1934 and Merriam-Webster had just published a new edition of its dictionary, with contributions from over 250 editors and consultants. However, if you browsed the dictionary, between the entries for Dorcopsis (a sort of kangaroo from Papua New Guinea) and doré (golden), you would notice the word “dord”, which was defined as a synonym for density.

But the word “dord” does not exist: it’s a ghost word! This lexical interloper was eventually spotted five years later by an editor, yet somehow managed to remain in the dictionary until the 1947 edition. So, how on Earth did a made-up word find its way into such a prestigious dictionary? Merriam-Webster tell the story in detail here. TLDR: it seems an editor wrote a slip for an entry for “d or D”, referring to the abbreviation for density used in chemistry and physics. A series of errors led to “d or D” becoming “dord” and ending up in the dictionary.

Dord has long since been excised from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but remains the stuff of lexicographical legend!

Do the fearsome All Blacks really owe their name to a typo?

You’ve no doubt heard of the All Blacks. They are the much feared and revered New Zealand national rugby team. They’re famous for the haka – the traditional Māori dance the team perform before matches  – and their all-black strip, from which they get their name.

yOr do they? Some claim the origins of the name lie in New Zealand’s legendary 1905 tour of the British Isles. After initially receiving a lukewarm welcome from fans and the press, the team started to win people over with a series of resounding victories. The began being billed as the All Blacks on posters and in newspapers. But why?

According to an account by one of the squad, the name stems from a misunderstanding between a printer and a reporter. The journalist supposedly titled his article All Backs – a comment on the Kiwis’ tactics, which gave the impression the team just consisted of backs. Thinking it was a typo, the printer added what he thought was the missing “L” from title. And so the All Blacks were born.

It turns out that this is actually a myth. The less romantic truth is that the name does indeed derive from the team’s all-black strip.

What about you? Do you have a favourite misprint from history?