Mars Kills Homophobic Snickers Ad

The Human Rights Campaign has announced that candy giant Mars Inc. has agreed to pull their new campaign for Snickers. The commercial features Mr. T machine-gunning an effeminate-appearing Olympic race-walker. Earlier this week, AdAge critic Bob Garfield issued an open letter to the head of the ad agency responsible for the ad, calling for its immediate withdrawal.

Following conversations between the Human Rights Campaign and senior Mars representatives, the company has agreed to pull its most recent ad using stereotypes of gay men to sell its Snickers product line. HRC applauds Mars for taking swift and appropriate action.

In 2007, another distasteful Snickers advertisement was aired during Super Bowl XLI. The company subsequently pulled the ad. Following that, HRC began a constructive dialogue with Mars on workplace inclusion for GLBT employees. We were of course surprised to see the company return to the same practice it had just recently rejected.

These kinds of ads perpetuate the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is a group of second class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable, but humorous. We are hopeful that Mars will make the necessary changes in their organization to ensure this does not happen yet again."

Here's the commercial again.