A few weeks ago, paparazzi got some photos of Suri Cruise holding up a box of Penis Gummis, gummi candies shaped like penises (see photos here). Everybody was all “ZOMG, Suri is just like her daddy!” and “Katie is a horrible mother who gives her child penis-shaped candy, for shame!” Anyway, Katie appears on Elle DeGeneres’s show today, and she talks about the dreaded gummi penis incident. Katie actually sounds like a real mom here:

It’s not always easy being Suri’s mommy. Katie Holmes knows that she’s under a microscope as an actress, wife to Tom Cruise — and mother to Suri, who turns 5 this month.

Already famous for her jet-set lifestyle, couture kiddie clothes and her attachment to a pacifier, Suri unwittingly caused yet another stir a few weeks ago when she was photographed — in the arms of her famous mom — clutching a box of X-rated, phallic candy.

Holmes, 32, opened up good-naturedly about the photo fracas during a Thursday appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

“Recently, I took [Suri] to get ice cream in New York at this place called Serendipity that we go to all the time. It’s for kids. The clientele is children,” explains the actress, who plays Jackie Kennedy in the new ReelzChannel miniseries The Kennedys. “We go in and we are waiting for a table and she grabs some gummies that are boy part gummies. I was horrified.”

(In pics that stormed the web, Suri checked out a colorful box of “Penis Gummies,” featuring drawings of anatomically correct chewy candies.)

Continued Holmes sheepishly: “P-e-n-i-s gummies. I said, oh wow those aren’t Swedish fish. . . They are called p-e-n-i-s gummies and they look like it.”

Holmes spotted the controversy immediately. “She was holding the box and I was like ‘OK, wow we don’t need that right now.’ Because I thought if I said ‘Put that back,’ and then she’s going to say, ‘What is this?’ And I really didn’t want to have that conversation.”

The Dawson’s Creek alum was upset that Serendipity was even selling such a raunchy treat. “I was like, why are selling these here? This is for kids. And then it was on the cover of a magazine that I’m giving her those gummies!”

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, no.’ We put them back.”

[From Us Weekly]

I get it. Kids pick up everything, and Suri probably only saw the pretty colors or that it was “candy”. That being said, I would have loved if Katie had told this story with the punch line, “So I took them from Suri and went to pay for them. Tom loved his gift!” Alas. But seriously, there’s enough stuff we can yell at Katie about, the Gummi penis incident just seemed like a cute kid story that could have happened to anyone.

Photos courtesy of Ellen’s show, WENN.