A SWEDISH family described their shock today after their eight-year-old son was given a swastika tattoo as a free gift with a fast food meal.

Eddie Hagglund was pleased when he found his kids meal from Swedish fast food chain Frasses in Umea, northeast Sweden, contained a sheet of temporary tattoos, local paper Vasterbottens-Kuriren reported.

But his parents were shocked when they found that there was a swastika among the tattoos.

"We could not believe our eyes. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry," the child's mother Malin Hagglund told the newspaper.

She added, "Eddie is a huge fan of tattoos, but we thought this was a very strange tattoo for a child and that it was a little wrong of the shop to include it."

The owners of Frasses said they regretted the incident. They believe the tattoos were imported from China and the inclusion of the swastika was a mistake.