A SUPERMARKET has pulled a new range of chocolate ducks from its shelves and issued an apology after the Easter themed products were branded “racist” online.
Waitrose first courted controversy on Twitter after someone spotted a discrepancy in the names given to three chocolate ducklings – one white chocolate, one milk and one dark – being sold as in a multipack by the upmarket supermarket chain.
While the white chocolate duckling was named ‘Fluffy’ and the milk chocolate variety was christened ‘Crispy’ the dark chocolate bird was simply branded ‘ugly’.
That was enough to see one disgruntled customer take to Twitter with a picture of the gift which they quickly branded racist
They tweeted: “Crispy, Fluffy and Ugly – trio of Easter ducklings at #Waitrose . Ugly is the dark one on the right. Overheard women saying “this is not right”, I agree, doesn’t look good at all. Thousands of other options… why #ugly?????”
Following further complaints, Waitrose has now opted to pull the product from its shelves.
The supermarket also offered an apology for the name choice and confirmed that the package has been redesigned, with the names removed, and is going back on sale.
A Waitrose spokesman said: “We are very sorry for any upset caused by the name of this product, it was absolutely not our intention to cause any offence.
“We removed the product from sale several weeks ago while we changed the labelling and our ducklings are now back on sale.”
