After that link to the Solid Gold Bomb T shirts on Amazon was posted last night, I ended up looking through them and spotted these delightful offerings:
this
and
this
For those who don't know, 'rusty trombone' is a sex act; you can look on urbandictionary.com if you want to know what it means.
I'm generally quite broad-minded and anti-censorship, but there are limits and I don't think it's acceptable to sell T shirts which imply that the child wearing them (as young as 7 years old) wishes to participate in sexual activity.
I complained to Amazon, using the 'contact us' option which I found via their help page. This was their reply:
"Dear Customer
Thank you for writing to Amazon.co.uk with your concerns about one of the title "Rusty Trombone Kids T-Shirt" we list in our catalogue.
This is an issue we take very seriously and we wanted to share with you our goals with respect to our catalogue.
Our goal is to support freedom of expression and to provide customers with the broadest selection possible so they can find, discover and buy any title they might be seeking. That selection may include titles, which some people, may find distasteful or otherwise objectionable.
Amazon.co.uk believes it is censorship not to offer for sale certain titles with repugnant or distasteful content, and we would be rightly criticised if we did so. As a result, we will continue to make controversial works available in the UK and everywhere else, except where they are prohibited by law.
Furthermore, because we strongly believe that the appropriate response to distasteful or repugnant speech is not censorship, but more speech, we will continue to allow readers, authors, and publishers to express their views freely about the books and other products we offer on our website. It is important to note that we do not endorse any opinions expressed by individual authors, musical artists, or filmmakers.
We value all feedback from our customers, and I thank you again for taking the time to send us your comments about this issue.
We hope you will allow us to continue to serve you."