It seems a candy being sold in Quebec, Canada has been pulled from shelves after they prompted a racism complaint before the province’s human rights tribunal. Sloche has agreed to donate $18,000 to a Montreal group for black youth and destory it’s remaining inventory of $12,500 worth of candy. The gummi spiders were sold by Sloche in a bag that shows a scowling black face with a crooked mouth, a gold tooth, and dreadlocks in the shape of a spider. A picture of the bag is seen above – unfortunately, the picture’s not very good, but it’s the best picture I could find on the web.
Now here’s the really interesting news to me: Sloche is actually known for pushing the limits with their candy packages. Here is a great site that shows some of their really weird, odd, and even gross candy packages. Their wrappers show gummi bears drowning on fishhooks, gummi bears being killed by cars, mice being grated (seen below), and frogs being dissected. Wow. I want some of those packages! Anyone in Quebec want to hook me up?
Other weird Sloche candy packaging
News coverage at The Globe and Mail
News coverage at ctv.ca
[...] Packages and Descriptions – Candy packaging removed from shelves & labelled rascist [...]
January 20th, 2006 at 12:00 pmGrow up
January 21st, 2006 at 7:47 amIt really shouldnt even count as racism.
It’s just a ghetto-ish black guy. He’s angry because a freaking spider is sitting on his head. Dont act like there arent any ghetto black people.
January 21st, 2006 at 10:52 amHey, whoever wrote this article, if you really want some of that candy, just e-mail me, I’m from Quebec.
January 21st, 2006 at 11:29 amI’ve already seen these wrappers, and honestley, considering the other wrappers of this company, I don’t think this should qualify for racism.
The company originally made beverages (slush) but they decided to start making candy with the same taste as their slushes.
listen… aight it’s not racist but why do WHITE people always take jabs at other races especially this candy wrapper image of a stereotypical black man ??? it seems like ur culture revolves around
January 21st, 2006 at 11:47 am“jokes” and that u think u don’t offend other races. White people… NO DISCIPLINE. If only the Western civilisation had Confucius to teach them about life… then maybe the white people would have been more humble and disciplined. I guess Jesus did the best he could…
This can’t be considered any more racist then the picture of captian morgan on his rum! I mean they have a white guy all dressed up! hes wearin one of those pirate hats, and hes got the fancy suit and everything. i mean they would only do it to a white guy. so why cant they put a gold tooth on a black guy and put a spider ontop of his head? nothing bad. if they put a white guy into that wrapper instead of black guy, i doubt anyone would have really complained.
and akira, your probably jus some white kid in high school. maybe middle.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:36 pmIt’s just candy,
Just because the person on the packaging is black, doesn’t mean that it’s racist! Oh, there’s a gold tooth? Ooooooooooooohhh…
They should make a candy with a skinny suburban white boy to balance it out.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:43 pmYou know, as a black man, I would think that even whites would see the problem with this stereotyping of a black man on this candy wrapper. No one’s saying that there aren’t brothas like that in the streets, but that candy wrapper, and this company, are telling me that they see all black people in that light. And, hopefully, each of you has enough common sense and decency to see the problem with that. Ryan, no one is saying that there aren’t stereotypes for all races in advertising, but the difference is that a black person, more than 1, I’m sure, said something about it. When you see a stereotype that upsets you, like the stereotype of pirates that yous tate above, say something about it, stand up.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pmAkira… c’mon you can’t possibly say that all the racism going around is simply ’cause white people are takin’ jabs at other races and seriously… saying that white people are the true source of evil in this world, evil is color blind, which you surely aren’t, get with the picture
January 21st, 2006 at 1:33 pmThe worst part of this news article wasn’t the actual racist candy… I’ve come to expect such idiocies travesties in modern product advertising.
The worst part were all the ignorant, naive, and RACIST comments afterwards.
It’s not that they put a black guy on the package. It’s not the color, but the characterization of the black person.
Hello? This stuff has happened before–stereotypical portrayals of blacks with beady eyes, huge facial features like lips, doing things like eating Watermelon. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. That product is racist and and wrong because it expresses the fact that society characterizes blacks as having these distorted features, gold teeth, and other rediculous things.
The excuses for this kind of racism are so rediculous. A pirate isn’t a stereotype. Neither is a skinny white suburban boy. You don’t see a pirate and think that’s a typical white person. My god, pirates like captian morgan don’t even exist anymore.
While you complain that akira is from grade school, the reality is your ignorance reveals the reality that you haven’t been around for the last sveral decades of the civil rights movement, and have just grown up in the past couple of years in a world that’s sheltered and ignorant.
January 21st, 2006 at 3:08 pmit aint that bad……its a lil ignorant, but not really racist
January 21st, 2006 at 5:14 pmoopsy. deleted a section by error. should read like this:
Read in the Japan Times: “Crimes set record high, arrests record low in ‘01.” It’s a report on the contents of a white paper released by the Japanese government recently. The interesting thing about it is that there are some classic racist statements written right in to the document and they are, as usual, presented in a matter-of-fact, unapologetic way. Here are two examples:
Last year saw a record 2.74 million Penal Code violations, excluding traffic offenses, up 12 percent from 2000, but the arrest rate fell to a postwar low of 19.8 percent, the government reported Tuesday, adding that although foreigners committed a small percentage of the crimes, their offenses were models for Japanese offenders.
and similarly…
The report notes that more Japanese are turning to crime, but also reiterates concerns about crimes such as robbery and murder committed by foreigners. While accounting for only a small percentage of all crimes, offenses by foreigners, including lock-picking and robbery, serve as a “model” for Japanese criminals, according to the report.
The point is not whether this ‘foreign criminal as model’ theory is correct or not, it’s that the government doesn’t seem to see anything wrong about publishing, even emphasizing, such a racially-loaded interpretation of statistics. Personally, I kind of like the openness of it. I mean, if that’s really what you think, then just come right out and say it.
There are other strange things about Japanese racism such as preoccupation with blood types, self-directed racism, and racial infatuations, but these will have to be saved for another day.
January 21st, 2006 at 6:15 pmaight listen.. i’m a university student so i ain’t ignorant. just listen. u guys are totally misunderstanding my words. “source of evil” i ain’t talkin about Christianity.. im talkin history such as the number of people murdered by europeans in the past 500 years..
January 21st, 2006 at 6:52 pmsee ryan you’re probably a causasian individual.. trust me.. the world u see through your eyes is different than what i see through mine.. understand that.. i don’t expect a caucasian to feel the same as us in this situation.. it’s like this.. causasians never had to deal with racism growin up as kids.. so anything you argue will lack credibility.. now i know why minorities stick together… i got lot of white friends.. they cool… so whatever.. like i said.. what u think is jokes and haha’s .. still pisses us minorities off .. trust me…u take ” jabs ” not knockout punches…
> aight listen.. i’m a university student so i ain’t ignorant.
The fact that you go to a university is immaterial. Trust me, I go to a university, and there are a lot of total f***ing morons there. You may not be ignorant, but that sentence is highly ironic. To me, it’s reminiscent of the classic “Your stupid” insult. You may want to try again using capitalization, proper punctuation and using proper words rather than “aight”, “ain’t” and “u”.
“I ain’t ignorant” — sounds completely ignorant. Hence the irony.
By the way, this has nothing to do with the topic or any race issue, it just caught my attention as kind of pretentious.
January 21st, 2006 at 7:57 pmAkira, I’m white, I never even post on these sites but I just couldn’t resist because you are such a joke.
You said: “listen… aight it’s not racist but why do WHITE people always take jabs at other races especially this candy wrapper image of a stereotypical black man ??? it seems like ur culture revolves around
“jokes” and that u think u don’t offend other races.”
“listen… aight.” – Right away you’re acting like a stereotypical black guy, fool.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:52 pm“it seems like ur culture revolves around
“jokes” and that u think u don’t offend other races.” – Then as if to top it off you go and generalize the whole white race as a bunch of morons who get kicks from dissing other races. If you look at the situation you are in fact the most wrong person here.