Tesco has launched a new range of plasters to 'better represent the nation'.
The range features fabric plasters in light, medium and dark skin tone shades to also cater to those from Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.
The concept for the plasters was developed after a Tesco employee spotted a tweet from April 2019 that has since gone viral.
In the tweet, the twitter user wrote: "It's taken me 45 trips around the sun, but for the first time in my life I know what it feels like to have a 'band-aid' in my own skin tone.
"You can barely even spot it in the first image. For real I'm holding back tears."
The emotional post gained 538.4K likes and was Retweeted 102.2K times attracting the attention of British writer Malorie Blackman OBE.
Author of Noughts and Crosses - a multiple award-winning novel series that explores an alternative history where dark-skinned people made up the ruling class - Malorie responded to the tweet.
Along with an extract from her book she posted: "Wrote about this almost two decades ago in my book Noughts and Crosses."
After seeing the viral 'band-aid' tweet uncover a much broader, long-standing issue of race representation - and the emotive response it provoked - the product idea was brought to the senior members of the Tesco team.
'BAME at Tesco' - an internal colleague network of 'Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic' people actively contributed to the project by co-ordinating product testing with colleagues, gathering feedback and having a say in the final design.
Paulette Balson, Chair of the BAME at Tesco network said: “One of the main objectives of our network is to help Tesco better serve our customers from all backgrounds and communities.
"No UK supermarket had ever stocked plasters in a range of skin tones before and we saw this as an opportunity for Tesco to lead the charge and make a genuine difference.
"Through our research within the network, we know how emotive a product like this can be.
"For example, one colleague reported that their child had felt self-conscious wearing a plaster on their face to school recently, because it didn’t match their skin tone and stood out.”
Nicola Robinson, Health, Beauty and Wellness Director at Tesco said: "We believe the launch of our new skin tone plaster range is an important step and a move that we hope will be replicated by other retailers and supermarkets across the country.”
The new range of fabric plasters cost £1 per box and will be available in stores from Monday, February 24
