Playmobil pirate ship. (Playmobil instruction booklet) 
 
 A Playmobil pirate ship set has sparked a firestorm over a figurine that resembles an African American slave wearing a neck shackle. 
 
 Ida Lockett of Sacramento, Calif., said her 5-year-old son received the toy as a birthday present, and when she was helping him assemble it, she noticed the instructions — telling her to put a play shackle around the figure’s neck. 
 
 “This right here was found on his neck,” she told CBS Sacramento about the piece. 
 
 “You cannot have this specific accessory and call it anything else. The fact that you can Google it, look it up, say what it is — it’s a slave collar.” 
 
 Playmobil figurine. (Playmobil instruction booklet) 
 
 The toy’s instruction manual shows a dark-skinned doll wearing no shoes, ripped pants and a tattered yellow shirt and directs the assembler to pop the silver piece around its neck. The ship appears to include a dungeon. 
 
 “It’s definitely racist,” Lockett told the CBS affiliate. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck, and then to play with the toy.” 
 
 Lockett said the set was a gift from the boy’s aunt, who purchased it from Toys R Us. The set retails for $89.99 but the store is selling it for $62.99. 
 
 Playmobil said in a statement to The Washington Post that the toy was intended to portray life on a 17th-century pirate ship. 
 
 “If you look at the box, you can see that the pirate figure is clearly a crew member on the pirate ship and not a captive,” according to the statement. “The figure was meant to represent a pirate who was a former slave in a historical context. It was not our intention to offend anyone in anyway.” 
 
 Toys R Us could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 Aimee Norman, the aunt who gave the set to the Sacramento 5-year-old, wrote on the Playmobil USA Facebook page that she was “MORTIFIED to have recently bought” the pirate ship set for her nephew, “only to hear that when assembling it, they found that its assembly instructions indicate to add the neck cuff/shackle to the black character’s neck.” 
 
 “WOW,” she wrote. “Would it be too much to ask for you to just create a regular old black pirate? 
 
 “Newsflash, Playmobil: this is the 21st century. People of African descent have contributed to mankind in a myriad of ways that existed outside of the disgusting institution of the slave trade. Selling children’s toys that are suggestive of slavery in play is obscene, even moreso given the marked absence of diversity in your entire toy line.” 
 
 Norman added: “#Slavery.is.not.a.game.” 
 
 What toy will they come up with next! Posted by Ida Ida on Sunday, October 4, 2015 
 
 Sacramento NAACP President Stephen Webb said he wants the toy banned. 
 
 “This is deplorable,” he told CBS Sacramento. “This cannot be accepted, and it needs to be pulled off the shelf.” 
 
 But not everybody agrees. 
 
 “You do realize that pirates took slaves & prisoners of all races right?” one woman wrote on the Playmobil USA Facebook page. “If you don’t like the idea of pirates and slaves/prisoners then a pirate ship toy is not for you. Also a child has imaginative play and can easily make said character anything he/she wants them to be. Throw away the offending pieces.” 
 
 Slaves (black & white) were used to row boats. Slavery is wrong but this woman's outrage is ridiculous. http://t.co/kngF1MwJSS — Debra DeBoer (@debradeboer) October 7, 2015 
 
 This story has been updated. ||||| SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A mother is upset after she says her son’s toy came with racist instructions, telling him to shackle a dark-skinned character that appeared to be a slave. 
 
 Ida Lockett was happy for her son after he received a Playmobil pirate ship for his fifth birthday. 
 
 “He was excited when he got it,” she said. “I spent the weekend putting it together.” 
 
 And only after putting together the gift from his aunt did she see what her son was playing with. 
 
 “This right here was found on his neck,” she said. 
 
 The dark-skinned character with no shoes and tattered pants came with instructions to put some sort of neck piece on him. 
 
 “You cannot have this specific accessory and call it anything else,” she said. “The fact that you can Google it, look it up, say what it is—it’s a slave collar.” 
 
 SEE ALSO: Sacramento NAACP Calls News & Review’s Kevin Johnson Cover Racist 
 
 Ida is sure her son was playing with a toy slave. The ship itself comes with what she calls a dungeon. 
 
 “It’s definitely racist,” she said. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck, and then to play with the toy.” 
 
 CBS13 reached out to the toy’s maker, Playmobil, and the retailer who sold it, Toys ‘R’ Us, but neither responded. 
 
 Sacramento NAACP President Stephen Webb says it is demanding action. 
 
 “This is deplorable; this cannot be accepted, and it needs to be pulled off the shelf,” he said. ||||| The first time Margaret Sawyer saw the Red Cross safety poster in Salida, she was perplexed. 
 
 "I thought 'It must be really outdated. This can't possibly be a recent poster,'" she said. 
 
 When she saw it a second time at a pool in Fort Morgan, she was stunned. 
 
 "I saw this one and I just kept thinking 'It looks like they're trying to do something here that shows all kids together of all different backgrounds but they're clearly not hitting the mark,'" she said. 
 
 She was traveling across the country with her young children last weekend when she spotted a Red Cross poster depicting "cool" and "not cool" behavior by children at a pool. 
 
 The only examples showing "not cool" behavior involve dark-skinned children. 
 
 "I felt really angry," she said. 
 
 The poster also caught the attention of Ebony Rosemond of Largo, MD. Rosemond runs an organization called Black Kids Swim, a group dedicated to helping African-American youth engage in swimming. 
 
 She said America has a history of racism surrounding pools and swimming. She noted a history of violence toward African-Americans to discourage them from swimming in public pools, and beaches that banned African-Americans which forced them to swim in dangerous locations. 
 
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 She called the poster step backwards. 
 
 "When I saw the poster, I just, was just very saddened that the Red Cross had chosen to put out an image that might one, discourage African-Americans from trying swimming if they were new to it, and also something that would extend a negative stereotype," she said. 
 
 "How can an organization that prides itself on being so open-minded, so understanding of the diverse populations of the world create something like this?" Rosemond said. 
 
 9NEWS spoke with William Fortune of the Red Cross, who said the children in that photo "were more designed to be children rather than any racial motivation." 
 
 Fortune said the poster was never meant to be offensive, and the organization strives to be inclusive. 
 
 "We're committed to diversity and inclusion in everything that we do," he said. 
 
 Fortune added that when producing materials, they undergo several layers of scrutiny before production. 
 
 "It makes me really question who is sitting at the table at the executive levels at the Red Cross? What is the representation like? What is the diversity like in the people who really get to say 'yes or no?'" Rosemond said. 
 
 Fortune said the posters have since been removed and the organization is developing "more appropriate material. 
 
 Rosemond said she wants the Red Cross to think harder about the impact of their material and send out a more deeply felt apology. 
 
 "I think the Red Cross can go further, they can issue a much more public apology and a much more nuanced apology that really gets to the root of what they did and what community specifically they hurt,"' she said. 
 
 Copyright 2016 KUSA
– A California mother is outraged over what she claims is a racist toy her 5-year-old son received for his birthday, the Washington Post reports. Ida Lockett says she was helping her son put together a Playmobil pirate ship set when she came to instructions to put a shackle around the neck of one of the dark-skinned pirates. “It’s definitely racist,” she tells CBS Sacramento. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck and then to play with the toy.” The boy's aunt, who purchased the pirate ship set, posted on the Playmobil Facebook page that she was mortified. "Would it be too much to ask for you to just create a regular old black pirate?" she asks. Playmobil issued a statement defending the toy as a portrayal of life on a 17th-century pirate ship. “If you look at the box, you can see that the pirate figure is clearly a crew member on the pirate ship and not a captive,” the statement reads. “The figure was meant to represent a pirate who was a former slave in a historical context." But not everyone was mollified by the statement: The Post reports the president of the Sacramento NAACP is calling for the toy to be removed from shelves. In her Facebook post, the boy's aunt claims the pirate ship was the only Playmobil set she could find with a black figure. (Playmobil once demanded a pastor stop crucifying toys.)