this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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What is this thing?

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Mysterious images on Dollar General napkins (lemmy.ca)
submitted 5 days ago by Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca to c/whatisthisthing@lemmy.world
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Quoted from my mother:

"A month or two ago, I purchased these napkins at Dollar General. When I opened them up to use them, I noticed that they just had weird shapes on them. Through the packaging they looked like they had flowers or something like that on them. So fast forward to a couple days ago, I bought another pack of these napkins, again from Dollar General. Just today I started to pay attention to the images on them...... what the HELL are they? Grubs? Turds??? What's your take on these weird napkins? Love you, Mom xoxo"

My wife thinks they're meant to be mitochondria and bacterium that failed or ran out of ink while printing and inevitably wound up at Dollar General.

I think they're either turds or croissants. Maybe both!

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 49 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Croissants. These are likely misprints from a run of napkins for certain bakeries.

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 30 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Definitely misprints. You can tell because of the uneven spacing of the elements and how the accessory decorations are inconsistent and malformed.

It’s quite common for a misprinted run of otherwise perfectly good products (napkins, in this instance), to be sold for a discount, as they are undeliverable to the original client. Discount stores like Dollar General would quickly grab these up.

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Cwah-suh

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Œee

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago

Is that the phonetic symbols for croissant?

[–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago

Pastries.

Badly rendered pastries, but pastries

[–] ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Tardigrade or maggots

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

This is it.

[–] maxthemummer@lemmus.org 2 points 3 days ago

You've discovered the numbers station of the napkin world. The question is who is communicating to whom?

[–] brem@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

Bean map:

  1. Plant beans in that pattern.

  2. Climb bean vines up

  3. profit

[–] reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 days ago

Looks like it's meant to be some kind of croissant or other pastry to me.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 5 points 5 days ago

Soft wee-wees.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

My wife thinks they’re meant to be mitochondria and bacterium that failed or ran out of ink while printing and inevitably wound up at Dollar General.

Yep, think kids birthday party napkins, but for nerds.

Honestly I immediately got a kick out of them. I both see why someone would think these were a good idea, and why pallets would end up at Dollar General after drastically overestimating demand.