Photographs of Germany’s national football team on packages of a popular chocolate brand have prompted online outrage among Germany’s far right because they include childhood pictures of players of migrant origin.
Italian manufacturer Ferrero swapped the usual blond boy on its Kinder bars ahead of this summer's European Championships for photos of German players as children.
Among them are Jerome Boateng, whose father is from Ghana, and Ilkay Gundogan, whose parents are Turkish.
A regional branch of the anti-Islam Pegida movement said on Facebook: "They don't stop at anything . . . Is this a joke?"
Other commenters expressed outrage on Wednesday and threatened boycotts.
Tommy Frenck, the owner of a restaurant catering to the far right, said on Facebook the pictures "make it very easy to give up chocolate" and urged a boycott "until marketing bosses have come to their senses".
The German satire magazine Titanic was quick to react, posting a Pegida-Edition spoof of the chocolate bars sporting a childhood photograph of Adolf Hitler and Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right Norwegian who killed 77 people in 2011.
Ferrero said on its Facebook site devoted to the German Kinder bars that it was against “any form of hatred of foreigners or discrimination”.
“We also don’t accept or tolerate this in our Facebook communities,” the company said.
PA