File this one under “bizarre.” Manchester United midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger may be filing a lawsuit against a Chinese toy company for the creation and imminent dissemination of a World War II Nazi soldier doll that looks nearly identical to the German soccer player. The doll’s name? You guessed it: Bastian.
According to The Telegraph and The Independent, Schweinsteiger’s legal team has already gone on the offensive. The Telegraph reports that Schweinsteiger may have the grounds for a defamation case, as what are now being referred to as “‘Bastian’ Nazi dolls” bear the highly offensive swastika symbol on their hats.
For its part, toy company DiD has denied that the Bastian doll was modeled after the virtually identical German soccer player who goes by the same name.
"We offer no figures based on the football,” Patrick Chan, a DiD representative, told German newspaper Bild. “The resemblance is purely coincidental … The figure is based on a typical German. We believe most Germans look like this. Bastian is a common name in Germany.”
There are so many layers of offensiveness here that it may actually be impossible to parse them all out.
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