Mattel Just Pulled An Episode of ‘Fireman Sam’ for Showing a Quran Page Being Stepped On

Someone recently spotted that a 2014 episode of the U.K. children’s show “Fireman Sam” shows a character treading on a page of the Quran, and Mattel just pulled the episode in response.

The page flashes for a moment on-screen as a pile of papers the characters slips on flutter through the air. According to a statement Mattel posted, the pages were supposed to be illegible and Mattel has severed ties with the animation studio that let the page of religious text slip in.

“It’s just an unfortunate incident where someone from the production company thought they were just putting in random text,” a Mattel spokesperson told the BBC. “We have no reason to believe it was done maliciously.”

People were so upset that the BBC (which doesn’t even air the show) received over 1,000 complaints about the episode. The Mattel statement apologized for any “distress or offense” the episode may have caused.

[BBC]