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The world’s biggest soap company has taken a detergent off the market in Germany after critics said a prominently placed number on the box signified Heil Hitler in secret code.
The Ariel soap powder, manufactured and sold worldwide by Procter & Gamble, had a large black “88” placed over an image of the German national football team’s shirt.
Among neo-Nazis, the numbers are a covert way of writing HH or Heil Hitler, the salute to late dictator Adolf Hitler, because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
US-based Procter & Gamble said it had never intended the label, part of a promotional line, to refer to Hitler.
“We wanted to promote the line as 83 plus 5, meaning an extended pack giving you five extra washes compared to the usual 83,” a spokeswoman at the company’s German office near Frankfurt told dpa.
She said there had been no more shipments of Ariel in the controversial packaging since Monday.
A Twitter user was first to draw attention to the double meaning.
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