Vietnam pulls dolls over South China Sea map

Seething international tensions over the South China Sea have struck an unlikely victim in Vietnam: popular children's dolls pulled from shops over a facial mark supposedly resembling Beijing's claims in the flashpoint waterway.

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Hanoi - Seething international tensions over the South China Sea have struck an unlikely victim in Vietnam: popular children's dolls pulled from shops over a facial mark supposedly resembling Beijing's claims in the flashpoint waterway.

Small and fluffy, with large eyes and rabbit ears, Chinese-made Baby Three dolls became a must-have among Vietnamese kids and Generation Z this year and had been flying off shelves across the country.

That was until an online backlash began over the Town rabbit V2 model of the doll - and a marking on its cheek that was said to resemble China's so-called "nine-dash line".

Beijing has long used the line to justify its claims over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, often to the displeasure of Vietnam, which also claims parts of the waterway.