Amazon, Target, and Walmart have removed a “German Army Soldier Adult Costume” from their websites after shoppers circulated screenshots of the listings and said the outfit looked like a World War II German uniform. The costume was made by Orion Costumes, a London fancy-dress company, and at Walmart it was sold by a third-party seller rather than by the retailer. It is the second Halloween costume Target has taken down in three weeks, after the Hyde & EEK! Boutique clown costume it pulled and apologized for in August. This time Target has said nothing, Amazon has said nothing, and the only retailer on the record is Walmart, whose statement puts the item on its seller.
What the Costume Was
The set came with a jacket, trousers with attached boot covers, a belt, and a hat. The Amazon listing, according to NBC Chicago, pitched it as a period piece: “If you’re looking for a vintage style look for your next fancy dress night, why not try a 1940s theme?” It promised wearers would look “prim and proper” and listed an “authentic 1940s military style with period-accurate details” among its features. Walmart’s listing, as quoted by Newsweek, called it “a historical military-themed costume suitable for Halloween parties and dress-up events” and did not mention Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, or the Nazi Party.
The uniform itself is gray, with a peaked cap, black collar tabs with silver insignia, and a black belt. The main listing image stood the model in front of the black, red, and gold German tricolor, the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is not a flag any 1940s German soldier stood under. A second image dropped him in front of a concrete hut with snow-capped mountains behind it. The list price was $49.99, the figure that appeared on the seller’s eBay listing.
Orion Costumes makes other 1940s military outfits, and those are still for sale. On Saturday, September 5, Amazon still listed the company’s “Home Guard Army Adult Costume,” a British World War II uniform, at $39.99, alongside other makers’ American and British World War II costumes. The German one is the only one that came down.
How the Removals Played Out
The complaints spread on Threads, where users posted screenshots of the listings. One user, quoted by Newsweek, wrote: “How many dozens, if not hundreds, of people saw ‘authentic 1940’s German soldier’ and thought ‘Yes! This is what everyone wants to emulate on Halloween!’ Disgusting, pathetic morons. Every single one of them.” Another wrote: “WTF with these Halloween costumes! This is SECOND one Target has had.”
By Tuesday morning, September 1, Newsweek found the Target and Amazon listings gone and the Walmart listing still up through a third-party seller. Google was still showing Target-hosted product images and a preview of the listing even though the page itself returned an unavailable-item message. By Wednesday morning, September 2, the Walmart page was gone too. NBC Chicago reported on Friday, September 4, that all three product pages were unavailable as of the day before, while links to them still appeared in some Google results.
Walmart was the only company to answer. A spokesperson told NBC by email: “We expect all items sold by third-party sellers on our site to meet our policies and standards. When violations are detected, we take swift action, including removal of listings, to maintain a trustworthy experience for our customers.” Amazon, Target, and Orion Costumes did not respond to NBC or to Newsweek, and Walmart has not said whether it, the seller, or Orion made the call.
The listings outside the three big retailers went next. Toynk, an online seller that carried the same costume on eBay and on toynk.com, ended its eBay listing on Friday, September 4, with eBay’s notice reading: “This listing was ended by the seller on Fri, Sep 4 at 11:18 AM because the item is no longer available.” The product page on toynk.com now returns a 404 error. By Saturday night, September 5, searches for the costume on Target, Walmart, and Amazon turned up nothing but other army costumes, and the only place HAN found a live product page was a drop-ship storefront whose product image did not load.
Why This One Is Different From the Clown Costume
The two Target pulls look alike from the outside and are not alike underneath. The clown costume was a Hyde & EEK! Boutique item, Target’s in-house seasonal brand, so it went through Target’s design and review before it reached the site. When it came down, Target posted a statement on August 24 that opened, “As a company, we know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” and the Associated Press moved a wire story two days later that put the episode inside a boycott that had already cost the company roughly $12.4 billion in market value. That story is in our August 25 report.
The German soldier costume came from outside. Walmart’s statement covers third-party sellers, Newsweek reported that Walmart carried it through one, and Toynk sold the same item on eBay and on toynk.com. Nothing about it passed through a retailer’s design team. It reached shoppers as a vendor’s product, at Walmart through a marketplace seller, which is how the same item could sit on three retailers’ sites at once and vanish from all three within days of the first screenshots. The check on a marketplace item is the policy screen after someone complains, and that is the screen that worked here.
Newsweek noted that Walmart has been here before, pulling an “Israeli Soldier Costume Kit” in 2015 after complaints about its toy rifle and prosthetic nose. NBC Chicago put the costume in a longer line that includes an Anne Frank children’s costume and a Cecil the Lion Killer costume. The difference in 2026 is the pace. Target’s clown costume drew a corporate apology and a wire story within about a week. The German soldier costume drew silence from two of the three retailers and a policy statement from the third, and the whole thing was over, listings gone and Toynk’s eBay listing ended, within four days of Newsweek’s first report.
Target’s 2026 Halloween assortment is otherwise still live. Our guide to the Hyde & EEK! Boutique collection covers what is on the site now.
