Following the bombing in Boston last week, Nike scrambled to pull its horribly timed t-shirts plastered with the bloody phrase “Boston Massacre,” reports ESPN.
The t-shirts, a play on the infamous 1770 attack on Boston civilians by British soldiers, were actually made long before the April 15 bombing. They were originally created by Nike for Yankee fans to mock the Red Sox after sweeping them out of its playoff chances in 1978 and 2006.
The games became known to Yankee fans as the first and second “Boston massacres.”
Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said on Monday that the t-shirts were immediately removed from stores.
“The shirts being referenced are older baseball shirts that were predominantly being sold through our factory store outlets,” Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said Monday. “In light of the tragedy in Boston, we took immediate action last week to remove this product from distribution.”
The bombing at the Boston Marathon last Monday killed three and wounding scores more. In the wake of the tragedy, the shirts could easily be seen as offensive. Even private retailers chose to hold off on their sales. This is not the first time Nike has had to pull a product in the wake of a tragedy. In February, they pulled an ad featuring Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius with the phrase “I am the bullet in the chamber” after he was charged with fatally shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.