The Creole Creams have sparked controversy in the wake of the much-derided Hey Hey It's Saturday blackface skit earlier this month.

They are similar to Arnott's Delta Creams and Oreos, with a chocolate exterior and cream centre.

Sam Watson, the deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, said the word "Creole", often used to describe a person of mixed European and Africa ancestry, was a racially loaded term.

"The word Creole comes from a period when people's humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream. This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis," Mr Watson said.

Mr Watson described the biscuit name as deeply insensitive and indicative of a "deep undercurrent of racism in white Australian society".

"It virtually infects every level of Australia's consciousness, language, culture and history," he said. "Why the need to use that sort of language to market a confectionery?"

Coles has not responded to requests for comment.

In the mid-1990s Arnott's renamed its controversial Golliwog biscuits Scalliwags before finally discontinuing the line altogether, while in Europe, chocolate and marshmallow biscuits produced by the Dutch biscuit maker Van der Breggen were still marketed as Nigger Kisses as late as 2006.