Bobblehead dolls immortalizing the assassin of Abraham Lincoln were recently taken off the shelves at a Gettysburg National Military Park visitor’s center bookstore, according to reports.
The effigies featured John Wilkes Booth holding a pistol, and were sold at the store for a week, before a reporter for Hanover’s Evening Sun dropped by and asked about them. According to Gettysburg Foundation spokeswoman Dru Anne Neil, the dolls were removed after the park superintendent, the foundation president and the bookstore manager agreed on the matter.
Neil went on to say, “on rare occasions, there’s an item that might cause concern, and obviously the bobbleheads appeared to be doing that.” The boobleheads, which sold for about $20, included packaging depicting the inside of Washington D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre, where confederate sympathizer Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865.
BobbleHead LLC, the Kasas City based manufacturer of the dolls, is currently making more, as 150 of the 250 original dolls were sold. BobbelHead sales manager Matt Powers stated, “there’s a market there – We like to let the customer decide if it’s a good item or not.”
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the site of a July 1863 Civil War battle, the bloodiest of the conflict with 51,000 casualties, and is considered to be the turning point of the war.
In related news, a Chinese manufacturer had recently began producing an eerily lifelike Steve Jobs action figure, adding to the selection of possibly inappropriate dolls for collection.