New T-shirts showing the Japanese famous Mr Men and Little Miss wearing suicide vests as Mr Jihad and Miss Jihad have been criticized by the Japanese owners who vowed to take legal action against vendors marketing the items.
“The Mr Jihad and Miss Jihad products were created without authorization,” a spokesman for Sanrio, the Japanese firm which bought up the rights to Mr Men in 2011, told The Sun.
The deplored t-shirts were first shown up on British online retailer Orbital Panda.
The items depict the famous Mr Bump character, who's always swathed in bandages, with sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest and a slogan above reading 'Mr. Jihad'.
Along with Orbital Panda, the t-shirts were available on eBay search along with other souvenirs such as fridge magnets, cufflinks, iron-on transfers and even edible cupcake toppers.
Another company marketing similar Mr Jihad T-shirts, planetarybargains.com, wrote of the product on a blog post: “Generally all of the Little People have not been taken seriously by the people of the west.”
“Now we will give you one Mister character you will not be able to make jokes about, here comes Mr. Jihad.
“Yes that is right Infidels we have added a new soldier to our arsenal of little people, and you will have to take it very seriously, Mr Jihad is on his way.
“Let’s see you laugh at that!”
Miss Jihad is also available, but so far only as fridge magnets.
After Sanrio’s declaration of legal action, Orbital Panda appeared to have taken the Mr Jihad T-shirts off the market, but they were still available through other vendors on eBay.
Mr Men and Little Miss characters were created by the late Roger Hargreaves.
Hargreaves, who died in 1988, created the first of 49 Mr Men books in 1971.
The Little Miss series, which started in 1981, ran to 42 books. Not all the books are available in English. Over 85 million have been sold around the world in around 20 languages.
/129