Mother Says Son's Playmobil Toy Is Racist

A mother whose 5-year-old son got a Playmobil pirate ship as a birthday present is raising questions about one of the toy set’s characters. She says the dark-skinned figurine, which comes with a neck shackle that she says is a slave collar, is racist.

Ida Lockett was helping her son assemble his new toy, which comes with an elaborate ship and four figurines, when she saw the instructions to put a neck collar on the character, who had dark skin, bare feet, and ripped clothing. “You cannot have this specific accessory and call it anything else. The fact that you can Google it, look it up, say what it is — it’s a slave collar,” the Sacramento mom, who is black, told CBS-13. “It’s definitely racist. It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck, and then to play with the toy.”

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The instruction manual for Playmobil’s pirate ship indicates that the collar should be placed around this character’s neck (Photo: Playmobil instruction manual)

Lockett says she was horrified that her son would be exposed to such a figure. While they were assembling the toy, a process that she says took three hours, “I told him [the shackle] belongs on [the character’s] wrist or his ankles and my son said, ‘no mommy, the book says put it on his neck and the hat goes on the white pirate.’ I looked at the instructions on the booklet and was angry and upset that I had just helped my 5-year-old son build a slave ship,” Lockett tells Yahoo Parenting. “My son does not need to be exposed to toys that instruct him to place a slave collar around the character’s neck. The fact that the character is dark-skinned makes it culturally insensitive and ridiculous.”

Ida Lockett with her son. (Photo: Facebook)

Not that playing with slave toys is OK for any age, she says. “Who thinks of this? And why? What’s the fun of playing with slaves of any race?” she says. “Why couldn’t they just have a dark skinned pirate with out being instructed to place a shackle around his neck?”

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In a statement provided to Yahoo Parenting, a Playmobil spokesperson said the toy and figurines were meant to be taken in historical context. “This piece is from a PLAYMOBIL pirate playset that is designed to depict life on a 17th-century pirate ship on the high seas,” the statement says. “If you look at the box, you can see that the pirate figure is clearly a crew member on the pirate ship and not a captive. The figure was meant to represent a pirate who was a former slave in a historical context. It was not our intention to offend anyone in any way.”

Aimee Norman, who bought Lockett’s son the toy, posted her own letter to Playmobil online. “I am MORTIFIED to have recently bought your Pirate Ship Set 5135 for my nephew only to hear that when assembling it, they found that its assembly instructions indicate to add the neck cuff/shackle to the black character’s neck. I suppose it’s optional as to whether a kid chooses to then place said character into chains or into a prison cell at the bottom of the ship,” she wrote. “When I was browsing your play sets for purchase, this was the only one that even had a black character and that’s precisely why I chose it for my nephew. I didn’t notice from the box exterior that the black characters were to be depicted in this offensive way. Who would think in the year 2015? … Newsflash, Playmobil: this is the 21st century. People of African descent have contributed to mankind in a myriad of ways that existed outside of the disgusting institution of the slave trade. Selling children’s toys that are suggestive of slavery in play is obscene, even more so given the marked absence of diversity in your entire toy line.”

Norman added the hashtag #slaveryisnotagameplaymobil.

But not everyone agreed with Norman and Lockett’s take on the toy. “You do realize that pirates took slaves [and] prisoners of all races right? If you don’t like the idea of pirates and slaves/prisoners then a pirate ship toy is not for you. Also a child has imaginative play and can easily make said character anything he/she wants them to be. Throw away the offending pieces,” wrote one commenter in response to Norman’s post. Another said, “First off it’s a part of history. You can’t wipe it off the face of the planet. History is taught in schools, it’s in story books, movies, etc. Secondly, the set is not just about slavery, leave it to folks to concentrate on one tiny thing within a broad area.”

Still others argued that even though slavery is historical fact, that doesn’t make it fodder for play things. Wrote one user: “This is a totally inappropriate toy. Would it be acceptable to have a toy that depicted children going into the ovens at Auschwitz? Of course not. Why would anyone think that depiction of a gruesome historical reality is a good idea for a child’s play-set?” Added another, “I know it may be a part of history but one we are not proud of and I surely would not buy one for kids to play with.”

For now, Lockett says she hopes that Playmobil will reconsider this toy in the future. As she wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday, “Let’s acknowledge the issue and then take steps for change!”

(Top photo: Amazon)

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