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Haribo have been forced to stop selling 'racist' sweets after a social media outcry.

The black liquorice faces have now been removed from the Skipper Mix bagged sweets sold in Sweden in Denmark.

Social media users have been in uproar over the images which some said reminded them of colonial times.

The company didn't feel the product had "negative connotations".

"We decided that we could keep the product while removing the parts that certain consumers found offensive," Head of Haribo Sweden Ola Dagliden told AFP.

"It wasn't something we saw as having negative connotations."

(Image: Twitter/@saamkapadia)

One Danish user, Saam Kapadia, said that the sweets reminded him of Denmark's colonial past.

His tweet, translated into English, read: "Multiculturalism, colonial legacy or the slave trade? #haribo skipper mix makes me think about Denmark and my Danish heritage."

A picture of the sweets was apparently removed from the Haribo Sweden site on Friday.

It is not the first time a Swedish company has had to backtrack over images perceived as racist by customers.

In 2013 department store chain Ahlens sent out a Christmas catalogue to 650,000 households with a picture of two black figures dressed as butlers with prominent red lips.

A company spokesman said: "We have received both internal and external criticism of the picture and have now chosen to withdraw the catalogue from our stores."