No Joke: Adolf Hitler doll which comes with a change of clothes - and a spare head with a kind face!

UKRAINE - April 23, 2008 - An action-man style doll of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has gone on sale in the Ukraine, with saleswomen comparing the doll to Barbie.

Supermarkets in the capital Kiev are stocking the 40 centimeter high figure of the fuehrer, complete with jackboots, leather trench-coat and swastika armband.

The £100 figure has a spare head "with a kind expression on it," glasses and several changes of clothes.

It comes in a presentation box with the dates of Hitler's birth and death on it.

The decision to market the figure comes at a time of growing extreme right political sentiment in Ukraine.

There are also reports of increasing xenophobia and racism, and of some extremists supporting racism similar to that of Nazi Germany under Hitler.

Critics believe a cult of Hitler could spring up among disaffected youths, too young to remember the ravages Nazism wreaked on the country.

Around three million people died as a result of the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, including 1.5 million Jews.

Hitler wanted to turn the country into a buffer zone with Russia peopled by slave workers working for the Third Reich.

Although Ukranian laws prohibit any form of fascism or propaganda, the dolls are already on sale and will be mass marketed this summer.

One saleswoman said, "It is like Barbie. Kids can undress fuehrer, pin on medals and there's a spare head in the kit to give him a kinder expression on his face. He has glasses that are round, in the manner of pacifist John Lennon".

The doll will also come with accessories like a miniature Blondi, Hitler's faithful Alsatian who died alongside the Nazi in his bunker in Berlin in 1945.

The doll is dressed in long light-brown cloak, military uniform and jackboots.

According to the saleswoman, should the demand be high, manufacturers will go further and launch a series of themed Third Reich toys, including interiors of Hitler's chancellery, toy concentration camps with barbed wire, barracks and operating models of gas chambers and crematoriums.