The series of five stamps released for general use Wednesday depicts a child character from a comic book started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico.

Mexico's tiny black community demanded Monday that President Vicente Fox apologize for a set of stamps featuring a black comic book figure that U.S. civil rights groups have slammed as racist.

The Asociacion Mexico Negro, which represents some 50,000 blacks living on the Pacific coast, said in a letter to Fox that Memin Pinguin, a 1940s comic book character drawn with thick lips and a flat nose, was stereotypical and racist.

"Memin Pinguin rewards, celebrates, typifies and cements the distorted, mocking, stereotypical and limited vision of black people in general," said the letter signed by leaders of the association.

The letter marks the first official complaint from a Mexican group over the stamps, which went on sale last week and provoked a storm of controversy in the United States. U.S. civil rights groups said they should be withdrawn.

Fox has said the stamps are not racist and ignored calls to pull them from circulation. His Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said the affair was exaggerated by "specific groups in the United States who make a living from this kind of scandal."

"They look more ridiculous than we do," he said in a radio interview.

"One would hope the Mexican government would be a little more careful and avoid continually opening wounds," said Sergio Penalosa, an activist in Mexico's small black community on the southern Pacific coast.

"But we've learned to expect anything from this government, just anything," Penalosa said. In May, Fox riled many by saying that Mexican migrants take jobs in the United States that "not even blacks" want.

Carlos Caballero, assistant marketing director for the Mexican Postal Service, said the stamps are not offensive, nor were they intended to be.

"This is a traditional character that reflects part of Mexico's culture," Caballero said. "His mischievous nature is part of that character."

However, Penalosa said many Mexicans still assume all blacks are foreigners, despite the fact that at one point early in the Spanish colonial era, Africans outnumbered Spanish in Mexico.

"At this point in time, it was probably pretty insensitive" to issue the stamp, said Elisa Velazquez, an anthropologist who studies Mexico's black communities for the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

"This character is a classic, but it's from another era," Velazquez said. "It's a stereotype and you don't want to encourage ignorance or prejudices."

The 6.50-peso (60 cent) stamps -- depicting the character in five poses -- was issued with the domestic market in mind, but Caballero noted it could be used in international postage as well.

Rejecting the U.S. criticism and insisting they are not racist, Mexicans have been lining up to buy the stamps. One state has rationed sales because of high demand, and the stamps have been bid as high as $200 per sheet in Internet auctions.

Mexicans are often accused of discrimination against Indians, who often live hand to mouth in poor communities.

Their lack of sensitivity to racism against blacks may be worse because Mexicans so rarely see black people.

A total of 750,000 of the stamps will be issued.

Ben Vinson, a black professor of Latin American history at Penn State University, said he has been called "Memin Pinguin" by some people in Mexico. He also noted that the character's mother is drawn to look like an old version of the U.S. advertising character Aunt Jemima.

The stamps are part of a series that pays tribute to Mexican comic books. Memin Pinguin, the second in the series, was apparently chosen for this year's release because it is the 50th anniversary of the company that publishes the comic.

Publisher Manelick De la Parra told the government news agency Notimex that the character would be sort of a goodwill ambassador on Mexican letters and postcards. "It seems nice if Memin can travel all over the world, spreading good news," de la Parra said, calling him "so charming, so affectionate, so wonderful, generous and friendly."