“Dangerous” Candy Ad Pulled

By: ANDY HUMM | The people who make Snickers thought it would be funny to do an ad during the Super Bowl showing two men eating the candy bar from both ends, consummating in an “accidental” kiss, and then needing to prove their manliness by tearing out their chest hair. Online, the company ran other versions of the ad, including one where one of the men hits the other with a wrench to recover his manhood.

Some saw this as poking fun at how homophobic men are, but GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) protested the ads vigorously and Mars Inc. pulled them from TV and the Web.

Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, was happy that the ad is gone but wants the company “to continue a dialogue and establish a working relationship” with it “about why images that encourage bullying on the playground and beyond are dangerous.”

Adsmarts.com, a site that covers the advertising industry, said that the ad may actually have driven away the core audience for the nutty treat who would now be afraid of being, well, snickered at for asking for one.

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