Candymaker Ferrero swapped the usual blond boy on its 'Kinder' bars ahead of this summer's European Championships for photos of the German soccer 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 asked on Facebook "Is this a joke?" Other commenters expressed outrage Wednesday and threatened boycotts. One suggested the photos were previews of "future terrorists" before the page was taken down.
The German satire magazine Titanic was quick to react, posting a "PEGIDA-Edition" spoof of the chocolate bars sporting childhood photos of Adolf Hitler and Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right Norwegian man who killed 77 people in a 2011 rampage.
Ferrero, which is based in Italy, said on its Facebook site devoted to the German 'Kinder' bars that it was against "any form of hatred of foreigners or discrimination."
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