Waitrose has apologised for selling ‘racist’ chocolate Easter ducklings after they received complaints about the dark brown one being labelled as 'ugly'.

A customer shared an image of the £8 trio, which included milk and white chocolate ducklings named 'crispy' and 'fluffy', and implied it was racist.

'Crispy, Fluffy and Ugly - trio of Easter ducklings at #Waitrose . Ugly is the dark one on the right. Overheard women saying “this is not right”, I agree, doesn’t look good at all. Thousands of other options... why #ugly?????'

A customer shared an image of the £8 trio, which included milk and white chocolate ducklings name 'crispy' and 'fluffy', and implied it was racist

The Twitter user said she had overheard women saying 'this is not right' and agreed with them

Waitrose later announced apologised for the choice of name, and temporarily withdrew the product from sale as it redesigned the packaging with new labelling.

The chocolates are now back on sale in store and online.

Many Twitter users reacted angrily to the decision, suggesting the upmarket supermarket had given in to excessive political correctness.

It is believed the tags for the ducklings came from the song The Ugly Duckling, from the fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen.

The song tells the story of a small, brown duckling who is mocked by the others.

Later he realised he is not a duck when he sheds his 'stubby and brown' feathers and becomes a white swan.

A Waitrose spokesman said: ‘We are very sorry for any upset caused by the name of this product, it was absolutely not our intention to cause any offence.

‘We removed the product from sale several weeks ago while we changed the labelling and our ducklings are now back on sale.'