Ellos necesitan ayuda.

Friday, November 7th, 2025

Recently, friend-of-the-site Alex S. sent me a link to an extension cord being sold by Home Depot. He said “I need a new extension cord, and I’m tempted to order this one just to see if the actual packaging matches the product image”. Take a look at the image of the Yellow Jacket 50’ extension cord in question, from Home Depot’s site:

Look closely at the text, and you should spot some problems with the Spanish “translation”. The word “Súper” needs an accent, and “powerblock” could perhaps be “bloque de potencia”. But it’s that first bullet point that’s really got issues, essentially working out to “Spanish needed needed needed” in a very broken mix of Spanish and English that’s missing a tilde and misspelling words.

But was this butchered Spanish present on the actual physical product packaging? Alex decided to purchase the product to find out:

Yes. Yes, it was. Please enjoy it zoomed in, with the English next to it:

This is all the more remarkable because the rest of the packaging has detailed Spanish with no obvious issues:

Though this failed translation was surely an oversight, it nevertheless wound up being an effective sales technique, at least for one curious buyer. Incidentally, I believe “Alimenta 3 herramientas” is roughly the ayuda they necesita.