I thought I’d direct you to an interesting article I read by Mark Sweney in the Guardian. It’s on the recent decision by Snickers to pull their Mr T ‘get some nuts’ commercial which depicted Mr T throwing/shooting snickers bars at a speed walker. Despite receiving only two complaints and being cleared of any issue by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, the company has decided to pull the Ad as a result of US engineered pressure by gay rights group ‘The human rights campaign.’ A wonderful illustration at how US pressure groups can influence our media. It’s also an interesting assumption by the pressure group that Speed-walkers are gay. I’ve seen the ad several times and whilst wearing brightly coloured lycra, Mr T himself looks like a throwback to the Village people. Enjoy the article..
“In the 1980s Mr T rolled around the US in the hugely popular series the A-Team, alongside fellow guns for hire Hannibal, Face and Murdoch, pitying many poor fools and generally being completely politically incorrect. Nobody much seemed to care – audiences lapped it up with barely a ripple of criticism. Not any more. A bid by Snickers to tap into Mr T’s retro tough-guy attitude backfired badly last week – complaints that his hounding of a wussy speedwalker for being a “disgrace to the man race” was homophobic resulted in the ad being taken off air.
Just another controversial ad? Perhaps not. In common with the Heinz ad recently ditched for featuring a “male kiss” (pro-gay or anti-gay, it seems advertisers just can’t win), the source of the Snickers complaints was a US pressure group. And, also in common with the Heinz ad, none of those objecting were actually being asked to watch the ad – neither of the commercials was for broadcast in the US.”
