Matalan in row after catalogue photo shows two black children modelling ape outfits 

• Photograph in new catalogue showed eight children in animal costumes
• Six were dressed as rabbits, ladybirds and Angry Birds character
• The other two children, both black, were placed in monkey costumes
• One Twitter user claimed it was ‘rude’ – another claimed it was ‘racist’ 

Customers have complained to clothing giant Matalan after the chain used two black children to model monkey outfits.

The apparent slip-up features in the popular out-of-town retailer’s new catalogue on a page advertising children’s animal onesies.

It prompted one Twitter user to accuse the firm of racism, while another customer complained the image was extremely unfortunate, deliberate or not. 

The two youngsters – both in ape suits – were pictured alongside six white boys and girls dressed as rabbits, a ladybird and a character from the smartphone game Angry Birds. 

A 40-year-old father reported the image to The Sun, complaining: ‘We’re living in a sensitive time and you’d have thought someone would have realised how bad this is.’

The image also did not go unnoticed on Twitter.

One user, @FlyyBlkGrl, wrote: ‘Flicking through my @Matalan book & I come across this…they really put the Black kids in the Monkey Onesies?! #Rude’.

Another, Andrew Sneddon, tweeted to the firm: ‘I’m finding it quite racist’.

The retailer however said it was disappointed the photograph had been perceived in this way. 

‘We regularly work with the two boys and they chose the outfits they wanted to wear, as did all the other children on the shoot.

‘Their parents were with them the whole time and they all really enjoyed the day. It is very sad that some people have turned this into a race issue,’ a spokesman said. 

Racist caricatures of black people as monkeys date back more than 100 years, when they were used in cartoons and postcards to dehumanise the people they mocked.

Earlier this year the Belgian newspaper De Morgen apologised for running a digitally altered photo of U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, which was designed to make them look like monkeys.

Matalan has more than 200 stores, most of which are large and outside town centres, and made sales of £1.12billion last year.