Major nationwide store was selling toys of color more expensive compared to the regular, white ones, the company said they lowered the prices to drive more sales

Black woman, a mother of three, couldn’t believe what she was seeing when she discovered that a major nationwide store was selling black dolls at a higher price compared to the same, but white dolls. The incident happened few days ago when the mother decided to purchase the doll online from the store’s website and made the shocking discovery.

The mother, who was identified as A. Brown, wanted to buy her oldest daughter a Kid Collection doll set from Walmart. Brown and her daughter already saw the regular toy set in the store few days before decided to buy them online, since the set in the store was with White dolls, but she wanted to get same set with Black dolls.

When she searched Walmart’s online store for Black dolls, she was nothing but devastated. The Black dolls and accessories ran for $39.97, while the white counterparts were sold for $25.00. She initially thought what she was seeing was a mistake, but later realized that the price is the same nationwide.

“They were 14 dollars and 97 cents more expensive than the white babies I saw in the store,” Brown said. “There are seven Black babies and there are seven White babies,” she continued. “But one set is $39.97; the other is $25.” As soon as Brown’s story surfaced online, many Twitter users shared photos of other products and confirmed the Brown’s case is not an isolated case with Walmart and other store brands.

Brown’s daughter initially wanted to buy the set with White dolls from their local store in Kentucky, but Brown wanted her daughter to have more exposure to dolls with their heritage and that’s the only reason why she searched for set with Black dolls online.

“She picked out the white one, with all-white little babies in the store,” Brown told WCPO. “So I went home and went to Walmart.com and found one set in white and one in Black.” But this is surely not the first time stores to sell toys of color at a higher price.

The story immediately went viral across social media networks and people slammed Walmart for their price policy. Therefore, the company had to do something explaining the incident to the public and they responded to Brown with an official statement from a spokeswoman:

“The price difference in the two items was the result of price changes made systemically. We lowered the price on a select group of toys, including only one of these dolls, to help drive sales. Unfortunately, we overlooked the impact these changes would have on similar items whose price did not change. This was an unintentional error on our part and we sincerely apologize to anyone it may have offended,” the statement read.

According to WKBW Buffalo, similar incident happened few years ago when a father found that Target was pricing their dolls of different races differently. “When my daughter asked the question, ‘Why is the black doll more expensive than the white doll?’ I really didn’t have an answer for her,” W. Johnson said at the time.

The picture shown in this article is for illustration purpose only.