Waitrose pulled their trio of chocolate ducklings from the shelves after they were accused of racism for labelling the darkest duck "ugly". Picture: Twitter.
British supermarket Waitrose faced a backlash after releasing a trio of chocolate ducklings, one of which was accused of being racist.
The three ducklings are white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate, with some having reacted with outrage to the fact that while the first two are named “fluffy” and “crispy”, the dark chocolate one was named the “ugly” duckling.
The backlash was sufficient for the supermarket chain to pull the duckling chocs from the shelf, changing the labelling before re-releasing the ducklings, along with a statement apology.
“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,” the statement reads.
While the ducklings were considered racist by some on social media, others disagreed, with many of the comments since the pulling of the product seeing the outcry and the supermarket’s reaction as a case of outrage culture and political correctness going too far.
Many have pointed out that the “ugly duckling” reference was apparently an innocent reference to a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, although some have said that while they acknowledge this, there is no reference to the colour of the “ugly duckling” and that Waitrose shouldn’t have made it the dark one.
Since the pulling of the product, however, most on social media appear to be arguing that the issue has caused unnecessary outrage.
Here are some tweets from both those arguing that the chocs were racist and those arguing that the outrage over them is ridiculous.
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