Woolworths UK Drops Lolita Bed for Lil Girls

Whoops-bit of a mistake! If you didn’t know, Lolita was a novel about and older man who engages in a sexual relationship with his 14 year old step daughter, actions that are illegal and taboo in the western world. There were several films made based on the novel, the best of which is a b&w one by Kubrick. According to contemporaries dictionaries, Lolita also means: A seductive adolescent girl and a sexually precocious young girl.

See also Woody Allen, the vibrating Harry Potter Broom and the pretty pink stripper pole toy also sold to UK girls and withdrawn from sale after protest. Well, at least the bed wasn’t cheap.

Woolworths drops Lolita bed for girls
Feb 01 2008 | www.itn.co.uk/news/

Woolworths has withdrawn bedroom furniture for young girls with the brand name Lolita after pressure from parents.

They forced the move after spotting the £395 Lolita Midsleeper Combi being advertised on the company’s website.

Lolita, the title of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel about a 12-year-old temptress, has become a byword for a sexually precocious young girl.

A Woolworths spokeswoman said: “Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect.

“We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about.”

She said the product was from a company that advertises its products on Woolworths’ website and then delivers them direct to customers.

A protest had been launched on the www.raisingkids.co.uk website which branded the name as being in “unbelievably bad taste”.

Complaints flooded in and the website’s editor Catherine Hanly contacted Woolworths.

She said a press officer later told her the staff running the Woolworths’ website “had no idea about that word”.

The press officer told her: “They’d never heard of the word and in fact, neither had I. I had to go on to Wikipedia to find out the meaning of the word.”