The sticker card depicts BTS members in holes in holes with bruised faces, a Grammy trophy over their heads and text that reads ‘BTS Bruisers’. The group did not take home any Grammy Awards on Sunday.
The company initially included the card as part of a Grammys edition of Garbage Pail Kids sticker cards, a series released in 1985 as a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. After a serious setback on social media, Topps apologized and said it had removed the BTS image from the deck.
“We hear and understand our consumers who are upset about the portrayal of BTS in our GPK Shammy Awards product, and we apologize for including it,” the company said. tweeted. “We have removed the BTS sticker card from the set, we have not printed any of the sticker cards and it will not be available.”
BTS fans, known as the BTS Army, expressed their anger and disappointment over the cartoon.
“Just learned from the disgusting cartoon Topps made of BTS. It’s not satire. It’s utterly racist. It’s hateful and dangerous to anyone who tries to write it off as comic, like violence against an Asian group in this world. , “USA Today’s Audience Editor Fatima Farha tweeted.
The setback comes during a time of increasing hate crimes against Asian Americans in the United States. In the past two months alone, there have been at least 500 reports of Asian Americans being targeted, with cases ranging from verbal harassment to physical assault.
Many people chastised Topps for revealing the image a day after eight people were killed in a shooting in Atlanta – according to officials, six of the eight people were killed. Atlanta police chief Rodney Bryant said Wednesday that investigators are not yet ready to say whether the attacks are considered a hate crime.