Walmart is apologizing after it made a Christmas sweater for sale that appeared to look like Santa was doing drugs.
The sweater featured a Santa Claus image behind a table with three white lines that looked very similar to lines of cocaine. Below the image were the words, “Let it snow,” reported the Global News, a Canadian news organization.
“These sweaters, sold by a third-party seller on Walmart.ca, do not represent Walmart’s values and have no place on our website,” Walmart said in a statement on Saturday. “We have removed these products from our marketplace. We apologize for any unintended offence this may have caused.”
The sweater did not appear to be available on Walmart’s website as of Monday morning.
The big-box retailer has allowed third-party sellers to sell their products on a portal called Walmart Marketplace, and the retailer has final say over what gets sold on the portal.
Walmart has gone through similar issues with items being sold on its portal in the past. In 2017, the company apologized for a third-party seller’s use of an offensive slur on one of its products listed on the marketplace portal.
It is also not the first time this holiday season a retailer has had to recall a controversial product from a third-party seller. Earlier in December, Amazon pulled Christmas ornaments featuring images of the Auschwitz concentration camp after the Auschwitz Memorial began tweeting about it.
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