The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., is no longer selling a bobblehead doll of Lincoln’s assassin at its gift shop, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The move follows news that the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania pulled the John Wilkes Booth dolls from its stores earlier this week, Lincoln museum spokesman Dave Blanchette told the Tribune.
Blanchette told the newspaper that the museum’s administrators has not received any complaints about the dolls, but that they agreed with the Gettysburg Park’s assessment that they were not appropriate for sale. “It seems to be in bad taste,” he said.
"This was the first time that we really took a hard look at having these items for sale," Blanchette told the Tribune.
The dolls of Booth with a handgun were removed from Gettysburg shelves on Saturday, a day after a reporter for Hanover's The Evening Sun newspaper asked about them, officials said.
"On rare occasions, there's an item that might cause concern, and obviously the bobbleheads appeared to be doing that," Gettysburg Foundation spokeswoman Dru Anne Neil said Tuesday.
The dolls were available for only about a week before the park superintendent, the foundation president and the bookstore manager decided they shouldn't be for sale, Neil said.
The Booth dolls, which are about 7 inches tall and come in boxes that look like the inside of the theater where Lincoln was killed, sell online for about $20 each. They have proved to be popular, as more than 150 of the original run of 250 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."
The company sells dolls of many controversial figures, including Kim Jong-il, the recently deceased leader of North Korea, The Evening Sun reported. But Powers told the paper, "I don't think we'd do Hitler."
Confederate sympathizer Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington in April 1865, as the Civil War was ending. He fled and was tracked into Virginia, where he was killed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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