Chocolate Bar Wrappers Spark Racism Row

Members of German anti-Islam group PEGIDA have objected to the faces of black and Asian children appearing on the packaging of chocolate bars.

Ferrero has swapped the usual blond-haired, blue-eyed boy on its Kinder products for a special edition released ahead of Euro 2016.

The operator of the Facebook page for PEGIDA's Bodensee branch posted a photo of the new wrappers, adding: "Is this a joke?"

However, the operator was seemingly unaware that the children pictured were members of the German national football team.

The chocolate bars feature childhood photographs of footballers including Jerome Boateng, whose father is from Ghana, and Ilkay Gundogan, whose parents are Turkish. They also picture white players such as Christoph Kramer and Mario Goetze.

The group reportedly said in a later post: "We've really dived into a wasps' nest here." The Facebook page was later deactivated.

Others also expressed outrage and threatened boycotts over the images of the non-white children.

Tommy Frenck, the owner of a restaurant catering to the far right, said on Facebook the pictures "make it very easy to give up chocolate".

He also urged people not to buy the chocolate "until marketing bosses have come to their senses".

The German satire magazine, Titanic, has been quick to react.

It has created a spoof of the chocolate bars with childhood photos of Adolf Hitler and Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed 77 people in a 2011 rampage.

Ferrero said on its Facebook site that it was against "any form of hatred of foreigners or discrimination".

It added: "We don't accept or tolerate this in our Facebook communities either."

Reinhard Grindel, head of the German football association DFB, said the remarks made by PEGIDA supporters were distasteful.

"The German national soccer team is one of the best examples of successful integration and millions of people in Germany are proud of this team because it is as it is," he said.