Walmart Canada is saying sorry for making available a Christmas sweater with an apparent drug reference.
The sweater featured an image of Santa Claus behind a table with three white lines that look similar to cocaine lines. Below the image is the phrase “Let it snow.” The Global News, a Canadian news organization, first reported the apology.
“These sweaters, sold by a third-party seller on Walmart.ca (our website in Canada), do not represent Walmart’s values and have no place on our website,” Walmart said in an updated statement Monday. “We have removed these products from our marketplace. We apologize for any unintended offense this may have caused. These sweaters were not offered on Walmart.com in the U.S.”
Third-party sellers are able to make products available on Walmart Marketplace — a portal on which Walmart can approve sellers who use its website.
Walmart has faced similar issues before. In 2017, the company apologized for an offensive slur used by a third-party seller in a product listing on its website.
And it’s not the first time this holiday season that a third-party seller has brought scrutiny to a major online retailer. Earlier in December, Amazon (AMZN) pulled Christmas ornaments depicting the Auschwitz concentration camp. Images used showed the train tracks leading to the entrance of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and a number of scenes inside the camps, where around 1 million Jewish people are estimated to have been killed during World War II. Amazon (AMZN) removed the products when the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted about them.
