Does this fidget spinner sold on Amazon look like a swastika?
The toy snaps together in various configurations, but the ad features a swastika-like shape
Amazon parcels are prepared at a robotic fullment center. Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
By Beth Harpaz February 2, 2024
A toy fidget spinner that can be snapped together in various configurations is being advertised on Amazon in the shape of what looks like a swastika.
“Imagine sending a kid to school with these swastika fidget spinner valentines off Amazon,” wrote one observer on the social media platform X. “Be mein, I guess.”
Imagine sending a kid to school with these swastika fidget spinner valentines off Amazon. Be mein, I guess pic.twitter.com/ezAr4wZTAN
— Critter (@hermitcritter) January 16, 2024
The toy is being marketed as a Valentine’s Day gift for elementary school classrooms. It’s packaged as a set with 28 Valentine’s cards and 28 kits of components in which four arms can be shaped and attached in various ways to a center disk.
But the shape shown prominently on the Amazon product listing looks like a swastika.
The product has five customer reviews. Four of them are five-star ratings. The lone one-star rating, titled “Ugh” and posted Jan. 28, presumably by a teacher, says: “I bought these to give to my class. Once I started to get them ready, I realized they can be made into a swastika 🤦🏻♀️ I realize there are a million different configurations, but I feel like I can’t give these out now.”
Oddly, some of the candy-colored components for building the spinners look like little dreidels.
It wasn’t immediately clear how to reach the company selling the product, Loscola, for a comment. The company is located in China, according to its listing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
A story about the product appeared Thursday in The Daily Caller, a politically conservative news website founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political adviser Neil Patel.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
