The ‘Feel Better Doll’ is a black smiling rag doll with multi-colored hair styled like dreadlocks, and bears instructions to “slam” the stuffed toy “whenever things don’t go well and you want to hit the wall and yell.”

The dolls were pulled from three retailers in New Jersey, including one in Bayonne that withdrew about 1,000 dolls after complaints from local legislator Angela McKnight. 

McKnight, a Democratic assemblywoman, visited the store after seeing an outraged post on social media, and described the dolls as “offensive and disturbing on so many levels”.

“It is clearly made in an inappropriate representation of a black person and instructs people to ‘slam’ and ‘whack’ her,” McKnight said in a Facebook post. “To have a product depict or teach children that it is OK to hit another child, regardless of race, in order to feel good is sick.”

Ricky Shah, the president of One Dollar Zone, apologized for the dolls and said they had “somehow slipped through the cracks”.

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