Nazi Robots on Coke Invade Hong Kong

Posted 1 May 2003 at 14:39 UTC by steve

Coca-Cola is promoting their drink in Hong Kong by shipping coke bottle caps with characters from Robocon on them. One of the robots from the obscure, 1974 TV series, Robowaru, has two swastikas on its chest. They resemble the Buddist swastika, not the infamous Nazi swastika, which points in the other direction (the robot's original creator says they don't intentionally resemble either). Jewish organizations apparently consider anything that looks remotely like a Nazi swastika to be evil and have condemmed Coca-Cola for promoting "the wholesale slaughter of six million". It's hard to decide who is most brain-impaired here: the designer who put swastikas on the robot, Coca-Cola for not noticing them, or Jewish organizations that can't differentiate between Nazi and Buddist swastikas. For more on this robotic PR disaster see the Ananova.com or NY Post articles.