Bobblehead dolls of the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln have been pulled from shelves at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitor’s center bookstore, The Associated Press reported.
The dolls of John Wilkes Booth wielding a handgun were taken off the market on Friday after a reporter for Hanover's The Evening Sun newspaper asked about them, officials said. The dolls were available for only a week before the park superintendent, the foundation president and the bookstore manager decided not to sell them, according to Gettysburg Foundation spokeswoman Dru Anne Neil.
"On rare occasions, there's an item that might cause concern, and obviously the bobbleheads appeared to be doing that," Neil said Tuesday.
The $20 dolls come in boxes depicting the inside of Washington D.C.’s Ford's Theatre, where confederate sympathizer Booth shot and killed Lincoln in 1865.
Gettysburg was the Pennsylvania site of a July 1863 Civil War battle where the Union Army repelled an invasion by Confederate soldiers under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The battle was the bloodiest of the Civil War with 51,000 casualties and has been credited as a turning point in the war.
More than 150 of the original 250 dolls have been sold, and more are being made, Kansas City, Mo.-based manufacturer BobbleHead LLC said.
"There's a market there," sales manager Matt Powers said. "We like to let the customer decide if it's a good item or not."
