A Florida shop had to scrap its ice cream cone mascot because passers-by thought it looked like a man dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
"We were just trying to get people to come in," store employee Jasmine Gonzalez told CNN affiliate WTSP. "We thought it was something fun for people, but eventually people took it the wrong way."
The Ice Cream Family Corner and Sandwiches shop opened a few months ago in Ocala. The owners hired a man to stand outside the shop dressed in a vanilla ice cream cone costume to attract business.
At first store owners told WTSP they had no idea the outfit was upsetting passers-by, but then they noticed a drop in business, and began to wonder what was impacting their sales.
Eventually, Gonzalez said they were tipped off that people were avoiding the shop, because they thought the peaked cap was not an ice cream cone costume, but a KKK robe. The mascot was immediately pulled off the street.
Some customers told WTSP they could understand the confusion, while others laughed at the ordeal.
"They (KKK members) don't color themselves (with sprinkles) like that," Wayne Austin chuckled to WTSP as he looked at the costume.
nothing to say about the latin looking guy that was inside the K-cone.since when klansman are Mexican looking.people are too stupid. And the woman crying not wanting to g through that intersection! probably will sue for pain and aguish.
How is this news....
This is yet another example of how racism still plagues this country, people need to stop pulling the racist card on every little thing! Maybe Abraham Lincoln had it right "My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land."
Wow, it is the bigots like yourself who are getting scared. If you don't like being called a racist, stop acting like one
Just... wow.
Maybe we should all just leave the country and go back to our respective ethnic homelands. Of course I'll have to divide myself into portions and send a bit to a view countries.
I WANT MY 4mins back !
rub out
I didn't realize that the KKK had updated their uniforms to include exposed faces and WAFFLE CONES!
ROFLMAO!!!!!! Thanks for the laugh. Too funny!!!!!
People are just stupid is all I can say about this. It just goes to show that people have never seen a KKK outfit. The bottom half had a waffle cone pattern. Again all I can say it that people are just stupid.
The KKK do not stand on the corner waving at people. That would have been the first thing would have told me he was not a representative for the clan. They don't have sprinkles on them either, people are sooooooooo stupid.
As a b lack man. Only a ignorant reta rded Ni gg would mistake that...
Sorry... just b lack complaining thinking they got their lotto lawsuit.
Racists...no Klan man looks like a cone with sprinkles.
Thank you, that's what I'm sayin.
One is an ice cream cone the other one is a pinhead, one sells ice cream the other sells hate.
What will you have?
Why, thank you CNN for reporting such important news.
Unfortunantly they changed to a Charlie Chaplin look alike in a "ice cream cone" brown suit with a red and black licorice armband and business feel off even futher.......
My god people are flipping stupid.
Why not make it a chocolate Ice cream cone? No one would make that mistake again
strawberry!
And no store employee had the sense to say "you know, that does look a little like a KKK costume" before the guy went outside????
Are you kidding me???