A Walking Dead T-shirt, featuring season seven's fan-favorite villain Negan, has been pulled from stores in the UK following complaints of racism.
The shirt in question featured an image of Negan's weirdly beloved baseball bat Lucille, alongside the words "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe" – a callback to the scene in season six's finale where Negan jovially tries to decide which of Rick's group to kill.
Though the modern version of this children's nursery rhyme continues with the phrase "catch a tiger by his toe", older versions contained the N-word instead of "tiger". The historical overtones led a shopper in Sheffield, UK to complain after he saw the shirt in a branch of the British retailer Primark.
"It was fantastically offensive," shopper Ian Lucraft told The Warwick Courier. "I can only assume that no-one in the process of ordering it knew what they were doing or were aware of its subliminal messages. The slogan is 'Eeeny meenie miny moe...' It stops there, but of course we all know what the original said." Lucraft went on to say that the graphic image of a bloodied baseball bat "is directly threatening of a racist assault, and if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood."
Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan, hit back against the controversy by tweeting "Holy crap people are stupid" alongside a link to the story.
A spokesman for Primark told The Independent that the shirt has been withdrawn from sale. "The t-shirt in question is licensed merchandise for the U.S. television series, The Walking Dead, and the quote and image are taken directly from the show," the spokesman said. "Any offense caused by its design was wholly unintentional and Primark sincerely apologizes for this."
