WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

CHEMIST Warehouse has pulled a controversial sex toy from its website, after being slammed for “eroticising young girls”.

The retailer came under fire yesterday for selling the Virgin Palm Pal, a male sex toy designed to simulate a “realistic hymen just waiting to be popped”.

It has now removed the product from sale and apologised unreservedly for the “inappropriate listings”.

“The offending products were immediately removed,” the company said in a statement. “Chemist Warehouse Online has implemented a new and rigorous process to assess the appropriateness of all product listings across the website but more specifically in this category.”

Campaign group Collective Shout slammed the retailer for stocking the product.

“Since when have chemists become defacto sex shops? Chemists are supposed to be selling products with medicinal and health benefits, not promoting pedofilic fantasies and eroticising young girls for profit,” Melinda Tankard Reist, co-founder of Collective Shout, told news.com.au.

The product description read: “Doc’s most popular line of Palm Pals has a new breakthrough toy you’ve been looking for.

“You’ll be her first and only. Designed to fit easily in your hand, made of phthalate-free latex-free UR3 material, and very proudly in the USA. This Virgin is waiting to be touched for the very first time.”

Retailing for $15.99, for a saving of $3.96 off the recommended retail price of $19.95, the Virgin Palm Pal was apparently a bestseller.

It was sold online but the website did not make clear whether it was also available in stores.

The website stated that stocks were “temporarily low” online and encouraged people to “please try your local store”.

Collective Shout posted a link to the product on Facebook and people were quick to react. “This puts me off supporting Chemist Warehouse,” Margaret Carey said. “Is this real or a bogus site in disguise? What is this world coming to?”

Danni Chaseling said it was “disturbing” while Christine Honor said it was “the most sickening thing I’ve seen in a long time”. “That is a revolting thing one might find in an adult store not a chemist!” she wrote.

Ms Tankard Reist said she had seen similar sex toys before, including a “Lolita Teenage Vibrating Vagina” and “realistic” sex dolls made to look like nine-year-olds, but never at a chemist.

“We see a lot of horrible things in our line of work as you can imagine, but this is incredible. For a company that might want to be seen as having corporate social responsibility, this seems like a radical departure,” she said.

“Don’t they care about the wellbeing of girls in the community? Why would they want to contribute to these fantasies of young girls existing to be ‘popped’ or ‘deflowered’?”

Collective Shout wrote to Chemist Warehouse to complain about the product.

frank.chung@news.com.au