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Theme Park Shuts Down Ride For Resemblance To 'Flying Swastikas'

Updated September 3, 2021

Every now and then, we hear of some scandalous ad or a product design and we wonder how nobody noticed what was wrong with it.

For instance, a Kinder surprise toy with balloons that read "KKK" should likely have jumped out at some point during the product's development, but sometimes designers can develop a kind of tunnel vision about their work.

To them, the intended meaning is so obvious that they didn't even consider how the final product might look to outsiders.

And as is the case with one German theme park, sometimes the way it looks was the furthest thing from anyone's mind.

The Tatzmania theme park in Löffingen, Germany might resemble Disney's Animal Kingdom to some people.

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As can be gleaned from the park's Facebook page, this is because it features both rides and exotic animals as attractions.

And at the start of August, the park made two new additions to their collection of rides.

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One of the new rides is a big roller coaster, while another that spun riders in the air was known as Eagle Fly.

Unfortunately, the second one was doomed to fail once people got a good look at it.

That's because, as some online commenters pointed out, the spinning parts ended up looking like "flying swastikas."

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This seemed to be a side-effect of the decision to put four arms on each spinning structure, which The Mirror reported that Tatzmania's mangaing director Rüdiger Braun plans to cut down to three arms.

He also said that the undisclosed cost of doing this will be split with the ride's manufacturer.

Once footage of the ride made Braun aware of its design flaw, he was quick to shut Eagle Fly down and apologize.

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As he said to German outlet SWR, "I'd like to stress how sorry we are to anyone who has felt at all insulted by this design. I want to apologise to all the people who are disturbed by the design or feel offended."

In Germany, such a move isn't simply made out of respect, but rather as a way to protect yourself legally.

That's because the use of Nazi iconography and other "symbols of unconstitutional organizations" is illegal under the German Criminal Code section 86a and is punishable of up to three years in prison.

h/t: The Mirror