California Mom Says Playmobil Pirate Toy Is ‘Racist’

A mom was outraged to see Playmobil manufacture a figurine wearing a slave collar in an ensemble of the Playmobil Pirate Ship collection.

Ida Lockett said her son got the Playmobil pirate ship as a gift for his birthday recently and had been playing with it. She didn’t notice anything was amiss until she started helping him assemble it. That’s when she found the dark-skinned character that had no shoes, tattered-looking clothes and a slave collar around its neck, CBS13 reports.

An arrow in the instruction manual directs users to put the piece around its neck. News in a statement that the toy set was made to have historical context, and was not meant to offend anyone.

One of the “ship passengers” was found to have racist connotations, as instructions directed children to place a neckpiece on a dark-skinned character.

Playmobil issued a statement to the Washington Post, saying that the figurine was meant to be a part of the crew on the 17th-century pirate ship, not a slave. “Who would think in the year 2015?”

“You can not have this specific accessory and call it anything else”, she said. “The fact that you can Google it, look it up, say what it is – it’s a slave collar”, she said.

“WOW. Would it be too much to ask for you to just create a regular old black pirate?”

The local NAACP has also chimed in on the toy, calling it deplorable and demanding that the toy be removed from shelves.

Stephen Webb, President of the Sacramento NAACP, still feels that something needs to be done.

Aimee Norman, the young boy’s aunt, wrote a message to Playmobil on their Facebook page about her recent purchase.

The character from the brand’s pirate ship toy, comes with a neck piece which is supposed to be fitted tightly around its neck.