River Island was forced to take one of their products off the shelves this week after a number of Twitter users threatened to boycott the shop.

Actress Jenny Bede saw the “Domestic Anti-Nag Gag” product on sale in one branch and took to Twitter to flag it up with Everyday Sexism – an increasingly popular awareness campaign that has amassed 142,000 followers. She wrote: “Found this in @RiverIslandPR today. Stunned. @EverydaySexism pic.twitter.com/o7puwCH1kC”. The actress later tweeted: “Please keep tweeting @RiverIslandPR about this absolute atrocity they’re selling”.

The £4 “novelty” product was a miniature football on a string, and the picture on the packaging showed it jammed in a woman’s mouth, with speech bubbles around her containing phrases such as “Turn the footy off!”, “Have you put the bins out?” and “Get your clothes off the floor!”. Another Twitter user under the handle @rachreduk wrote: “@riverislandhelp hi, your anti-nag gag is highly offensive, would you please consider removing them from your stores?”

On Tuesday, River Island released a statement to the Telegraph saying: “As soon as this product was brought to our attention we withdrew it from sale and removed it from our website.” This did seem an odd way to word the statement, as if they were not even aware they were actually selling the item. The store went on to to tweet: “We’re sorry to hear that one of our novelty gifts has caused upset to our customers. We have now removed this item from the site”. Many continued to complain on Twitter, saying that this apology was “pathetic”.

This was probably an ill-considered product to put on the shelves – one that was likely to cause at least some offence. The store was also arguably too slow to act on Twitter, where their customer crisis began. Like many other businesses, they would do well to monitor what’s being said about them and their products, so they can respond quickly in the event of any complaints.