eBay has removed from its selling list Adolf Hitler plastic toy men made by LEGO.
The small toy men, made from official LEGO bodies complete with painted Nazi uniforms, painted swastika armbands and even sporting the mini toothbrush mustache of the dictator, were taken out from the auction site’s catalog of for sale items.
Other LEGO figures that went with it were those of a concentration camp officer, one of Hitler’s bodyguards and a WWII German officer with a Luger in hand.
These LEGO Nazis appeared in eBay from different sellers and were auctioned off for up to £12 each but eBay took them off saying that the said items violated its term of use.
“These products are not permitted for sale on eBay in the UK. They will be removed.
We proactively search for these products and remove them from the site, including banning overseas sellers from exporting to the UK.
We have a very clear policy on this and I can see from the listing that the seller has taken some specific steps to avoid our automatic detection system,” a spokesperson from eBay said.
One seller who went by the name of “Gandalf the Yellow Head” claimed that he created the series of Hitler LEGO figures.
He even went on to say:
“I do other custom WWII mini-figures. One I’m working on now is a German medic.
If someone lets me know what requests they want, I can try. They are airbrush painted.”
LEGO harshly criticized the said eBay and called the modification of their models into controversial figures a “sick trade”.
“We are proud of our product portfolio which has been developed to encourage imaginative play.
It is unfortunate that on rare occasions people use their creativity in a rather tasteless manner,” Emma Owen, head of LEGO’s PR Department, pointed out.
It can be remembered that eBay came under fire last year after some of its sellers auctioned off relics from the Nazi Holocaust including concentration camp victims’ clothes.