Haribo told to stop selling 'racist' sweets which 'depict primitive African, Asian or Native American art' by customers in Scandinavia
Source: dailymail.co.uk
Haribo has pulled a line of liquorice sweets shaped like faces after a social media outcry from customers who consider them racist.
The sweet manufacturer has stopped selling some parts of its bagged Skipper Mix in Denmark and Sweden.
The product features black gummy sweets shaped like distorted faces or traditional African masks.
A spokesman said the sweets were themed around artefacts which 'a sailor who travelled the world' might have brought home.
The imagery 'wasn't something we saw as having negative connotations', according to the head of Hairbo Sweden, Ola Dagliden.
But the company had been faced with growing pressure on social media to act over the product, which had been on sale for years, and said that it decided to alter its product in response.
One Danish user, Saam Kapadia, said that the sweets reminded him of a 'colonial legacy'.
Translated into English, his tweet said: 'Multiculturalism, colonial legacy or the slave trade? #haribo skipper mix makes me think about Denmark and my Danish heritage.'
'Negative connotations': Haribo said it hadn't realised the potential for offence, and had removed the sweets in question from packets
Mr Dagliden said: 'We decided that we could keep the product while removing the parts that certain consumers found offensive.'
'It wasn't something we saw as having negative connotations.'
A picture of the sweets was removed from Haribo Sweden's website on Friday.
Other allegedly racist depictions of African and Asian people have sparked a heated debate in Sweden in the last few years.
In November, the Swedish department store Aahlens said it had recalled a brochure featuring two blackfaced minstrels with big pink lips.
In 2012, Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet reported that one in ten libraries in the country refused to display or tried to limit access to the comic book Tintin in the Congo, which some claimed was racist.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
