An American doll-maker has sparked controversy by unveiling a line of Nazi figurines.

　　Mike Fosella has produced Action Man-sized dolls of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele, the concentration camp doctor.

　　The collectors' items are accurate to the smallest detail, with resin cast heads and plastic bodies with enough pivot points to allow them to give Nazi-style salutes. Mr Fosella plans further figures of Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

　　But the entrepreneur came under fire for his foot-high dolls, which cost￡118 and were unveiled at New York''s toy fair.

　　Ken Jacobson, director of the American Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Daily News: "The people who are most interested in these things are probably the ones with sinister intentions."Joyce Mike, president of the Academy of American Doll Artists, said: "I think overall, what he's doing is gratuitous sensationalism."

　　Mr Fosella, of Pound Ridge, near New York, said he was only making 50 figures of each leading Nazi, as well as a model SS officer with a reproduction uniform."To me, it's an art form. They don't glorify Hitler or Nazis. If I were mass marketing them at the toy store, that would be another story."