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'BTS Bruisers' by Garbage Pail Kids SHAMMY Awards slammed for violent portrayal amid 'anti-Asian hate crimes'

BTS is portrayed with bruises in a game of Whack-A-Mole where the Grammy award is the supposed hammer and they are bruised by it with visible signs of marks on their faces

The 2021 Topps Garbage Pail Kids: The Shammy Awards is currently under fire for a violent portrayal of BTS in their new collectible range. While some BTS ARMY claimed that the portrayal of BTS with "bruises" is indicative of the unfair treatment they received from the Recording Academy, others have said that with the rising hate crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans, portraying BTS as "BTS Bruisers" is in bad taste and shouldn’t be allowed to continue.

The new satire series of the collectibles features a number of artistes who won the Grammy this year including Stunning Stallion, Buoyant Billie, Wild Styles, UF Bruno, Harry Boa, Bopping K-pop, Taylor Turf, Tree Swift, Lars Mars and more. But what some pointed out is that only BTS is portrayed with bruises in a game of Whack-A-Mole where the Grammy award is the supposed hammer and they are bruised by it with visible signs of marks on their faces.

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With the rising amount of violence against the Asian community, the satire didn’t sit well with many as YouTuber Jose Ochoa took to Twitter to ask the brand, “Can you explain why you chose to illustrate BTS in this way? The other artists you’ve included have no depiction of violence in their illustrations. Why did this get green-lit?”

He added, “I’m all for satire but there were different ways you could’ve approached the situation with the Grammys using BTS. With the rise in anti-Asian Hate Crimes, you chose to illustrate them getting beat by a grammy in a game of whac-a-mole…”

BTS ARMY also commented that in the recent light of racism and violence, the caricature seems to be in bad taste as a fan slammed the brand saying, “Absolutely disgusting! Especially in light of what has been going on in the Asian community. This is what they decided to do?”

Another said, "It's the height of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the US. This looks like kekeke material for all BTS haters. If they had no malice and their goal was to comment on the situation via caricature, it's still in poor taste and incredibly tone deaf."

A fan outraged, "extremely distasteful and disturbing. there are hundreds of thousands of other ways they could have used to depict the grammys as a scam for snubbing bts other than violence. so the fact that they chose this...poor very poor choice."

Fans also spoke of how heartbreaking it is that after the poor treatment of BTS, the caricature seems even a low blow. A fan said, "You don't know how I cried after seeing this. Iam hurt. Iam a true fan and seeing this hurts a lot. Why are they so unfair with them? What did they do to deserve this treatment? They're giving their best to entertain and make ppl happy and yet you only sabotage them with this."

The fan added, "Garbage. This isn't an Artwork, Art will always be great too look at. Not like this. I'm disappointed,I'm mad and I will never forget this."

Fans have also urged others to mail the PR of the company for its immediate takedown and inform Big Hit Entertainment of the same.

Topps issued a statement regarding the situation later writing, "We understand our consumers who are upset about the portrayal of BTS in our GPK Shammy Awards product and we apologize for including it." Read the statement below.