A John Wilkes Booth bobblehead doll, left, is seen for sale alongside a President Abraham Lincoln bobblehead doll at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitors Center Battlefield Bookstore in Gettysburg, Pa.
The news that bobblehead dolls of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, were yanked from the shelves of the Gettysburg National Military Parks visitors’ center bookstore isn’t all that shocking. What’s a touch more surprising is that they were on the shelves to begin with. And that’s ignoring the fact that the bobblehead of Booth depicts him with a drawn handgun, and the 7-inch doll comes in a box made to look like Ford’s Theatre, where Booth shot Lincoln before fleeing to Virginia.
The dolls were on sale for about a week before a reporter for The Evening Sun newspaper in Hanover, Penn., started asking questions. The North’s resistance to the South at Gettysburg in July 1863 was a deadly battle, and a significant turning point in the Civil War. Two years later, Booth assassinated Lincoln in Washington, D.C.
(PHOTOS: Civil War Re-enactors and the Battle over Historic Sites)
NewsFeed wonders how the idea of celebrating Booth gets taken to the point of a bobblehead. Imagine the brainstorming session that came up with the idea: “Hey, this is one of the most sacred sites of the Civil War. Let’s bring in a toy that showcases a man who assassinated the President largely because of this site, and let’s put a handgun on him for added affect. Sound good?”
Gettysburg Foundation spokeswoman Dru Anne Neil admitted the bobblehead dolls appeared to cause some concern, so they were pulled.
Matt Powers, sales manager for the Kansas City, Mo., company making the dolls told the Associated Press that his company lets the customer decide if a product should last. Since 150 of the 250 dolls that were originally made have already sold, the company plans on making more dolls for online sales.