Woolworths forced to withdraw LOLITA bedroom furniture range for girls

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The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard designed for girls aged around six, was put on sale on the Woolworths website for £349.99.

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The Lolita bed: Parents complained it was bad taste to name children's furniture after a book about a paedophile

Staff, it appears, had no idea of the sexual connotations of the name. But a mother who was browsing the site did, and put a message on the Raisingkids.co.uk website to complain.

She wrote: "Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it's bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named 'Lolita'?."

A torrent of messages followed echoing her thoughts, some saying they would boycott the store.

A skimpy thong comes as part of the range as does a pen and stationary set (below) with the words Playboy emblazoned across it

Woolworths initially appeared baffled and refused to withdraw the product, saying in addition to the family market it also had to "respond to customer demands and follow current trends".

After a quick investigation they changed their minds.

A spokesman for the company said: "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."

Lolita was a book written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1955 in which 12-year-old Lolita becomes the object of her paedophile step-father's sexual obsession. It was later made into a film directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Catherine Hanly, who edits the Raisingkids.co.uk site, praised the influence the mums had over Woolworths.

She said: "It's also interesting to see how fast a multinational company can move if it's worried about its public image."

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A pole for young girls to practice their pole-dancing routinue is just one of the items in the controversial Lolita range

On-line parent power has been growing in recent years.

In 2006 Tesco stopped selling a pole-dancing kit on its website over accusations it was destroying children's innocence.

And last summer an on-line campaign by Mumsnet resulted in a cinema advert about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann stopped from being screened before the children's film Shrek the Third.