Even More Ad Controversies!

 Here’s Even More Ad Controversies!

• Kraft Heinz suspended Planters' Super Bowl LIV ad campaign, which centered around the Heroic Sacrifice of their longtime mascot Mr. Peanut, in the wake of Kobe Bryant's tragic accident. Both the incident and the first ad in question involved vehicle accidents, with the Planters ad involving a car accident and Kobe dying in a helicopter accident, and the campaign would've continued in the week of Kobe's death with new material leading up to Mr. Peanut's funeral, which was to air during the game itself. Despite the cancellation, the ad slated for the game, which ended with Mr. Peanut being reborn as Baby Nut, aired as scheduled.
• Weber Grills wound up apologizing after sending out its recipe-of-the-week email on BBQ Meat Loaf the same day news broke that Meat Loaf had passed away.
• Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, did a Weight Watchers commercial in which she said she got most of her exercise running from the paparazzi. It was released the same week as the death of Princess Diana of Wales and was immediately pulled

• WaMu (Washington Mutual Bank) ran ads in the mid-2000s showing that they kept the "stuffy old bankers" penned up where they couldn't get in the way of their innovative financial services, like loans for borrowers that other banks considered risky. Then they folded in the 2008 banking crisis...because of loans to risky borrowers.
• FedEx did a commercial where Steve Irwin was bitten by a snake, and croaked because the antivenom wasn't shipped by FedEx and didn't get there. Of course, it wasn't a snake that ultimately killed him, but still.

• In the 1960s, Humble Oil produced an advertisement boasting that the oil they output each day could melt 7 million tons of glacier. Nowadays, melting glaciers is something oil companies really don't want to be associated with.
• Dutch airline KLM ran print ads prominently featuring one of their pilots, Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten. Shortly afterwards, Veldhuyzen van Zanten was killed in the Tenerife airport disaster, and the main cause of the accident was his attempting to take off without official clearance.
• This 2004 Bush campaign ad ran during the Olympics, celebrating the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were now free and democratic nations. Needless to say, this didn't age well.
• In 1995,  an ad for Windows 95 that featured the founder wearing a trenchcoat and blasting with a shotgun while fighting in space and ending with a tagline under the Microsoft logo that says "Who do you want to execute today?". Everything about this would become a lot more worst following the Columbine massacre, the people having played “random” Space shooters, wearing trenchcoats, and wielding shotguns.
• Ads for Schlitterbahn water park Kansas City. One had singing about making memories with family and having fun. The park’s record setting Verruckt water slide was prominent in one shot in the ad. Then, in 2016, a boy died when the raft he was in on the slide went airborne and he was decapitated. The park operators were found to have been negligent in designing the ride.
• A 1978 commercial for the US Olympic committee encourages donations to help aid US swimmers in training for the Moscow Olympics. After the invasion of Afghanistan a year later, the US would boycott the games.
• The commercials for the Ayds appetite-suppressant candy (which, yes, died slowly during the 1980s because of the rise of AIDS, Needless to say, these ads were not intended to promote diet pills
• Toyota's slogan "Moving Forward" has become a lot more uncomfortable ever since the 2010 recall, since people have reported that their Toyota vehicles accelerate suddenly and uncontrollably, and don't respond to the driver pressing the brake pedal.
• There used to be a chain called Chapter 11 Bookstores with the motto "Prices so low, you'd think we were going bankrupt!". Which, yes, they later did.
• Mattel Electronics' commercial for BurgerTime, which ends with Mr. Hot Dog saying "We are closed now!" as he slams the window shut on the drive-thru, came out months before Mattel Electronics closed down. For that reason, the programmers quoted the line extensively that day
• Commercials for Breyers ice cream used to feature kids having trouble reading the ingredient labels of competitors, struggling to pronounce things like "polysorbate 80" and "mono and diglycerides", but can easily read the much simpler list of Breyers' ingredients containing things like milk and natural vanilla. However, Unilever has been cutting costs in the brand, so it features those same ingredients nowadays and is even marketed as "frozen dairy dessert" due to the use of the cheaper skim milk and whey (a byproduct of cheese) instead of whole milk and cream.
• Subway had a mobile game called Jared's Pants Dance marketed for kids, which becomes a very unfortunate name in light of Subway's promoter accused of having relationships with children 
• A 2010 ESPN "This is Sportscenter" ad featured mild-mannered Dwight Howard getting the story on how Superman saved Hannah Storm from a coffee machine that caught on fire (the joke, of course, being that Superman is Dwight Howard's alter ego). In December 2012, Storm received severe facial and upper body burns after a gas grill's propane tank exploded in her face
• A 1996 Snickers commercial shows a football player taking a big hit, Pretty funny at the time, but since then there have been a ton of studies and examples of the damage that can be done to football players (all football players, regardless of type) by repeated head injuries.
• In 1968, London Weekend Television was due to start broadcasting. During the final weekend of their predecessor ATV London's broadcast, they ran a short trailerwith a letter giving a positive review of the programming for the upcoming first weekend. The announcer noted that the letter "seem(ed) a bit premature", and indeed it was — the first weekend (and several more afterward) ended up being wiped out by strike action.
• A 2000 Super Bowl ad has a presenter who mentions how "in 2004, the tide was turned against AIDS", in 2006 ("two years later", according to the ad), there were "great strides against cancer, and most notably, a "remarkable breakthrough against spinal cord injuries", which featured the CG-enhanced Christopher Reevewalking onstage. Sadly, Reeve would die in 2004
• A 2009 commercial for the MTV Video Music Awards features Taylor Swift singing about the 2009 VMAs and how good it will be, including the line "There'll be no teardrops on my guitar." At the actual show, Kanye West hijacked the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech so that he could rep Beyonce
• In 1999, Sunny Delight ran a Christmas commercial in the UK depicting a snowman turning orange. The ad wound up airing the same week as news reports about people’s skin became yellow after drinking Sunny D several times a day; it didn't help the drink had already come under scrutiny for exaggerating its health benefits.
• Thisadvert for the failed YouChew forumsreboot, particularly when it says "You might think this community will become a warzone. Because of that, the rebrand will be dead in a few days." Which is precisely what happened. Far from coming back stronger as the advert asserts, the failure of the reboot would not only kill any chance of the YouChew brand name making a return, but also wipe its entire 13-year legacy off the internet.
• A 1967 jingle for Aunt Jemima pancakes and syrup sang that the only thing worse than eating the pancakes without the syrup would be "no Aunt Jemima's at all." In 2021, Quaker announced plans to rebrand Aunt Jemima pancakes and syrup under the name "Pearl Milling Company", in the wake of protests against police brutality towards African-Americans.
• A series of 2009-2010 Target commercials starred Maria Bamford as a crazy woman who was so obsessed with Target's Christmas sale that she was unable to sleep and dedicated all her time to planning for the sale. The next year, Bamford suffered several nervous breakdowns related to her bipolar disorder
• The 1993 Jack in the Box "Monster Burger" promotion ran with the tagline "So Good, it's Scary!" The high demand for the burger became legitimately scary when it led to a massive outbreak of E. coli
• Kelloggs Yogos Bits candy was once advertised with the slogan “A taste you’ll love so much, you’ll hate when it’s gone” (as in, when you’ve eaten it all). Since it’s been discontinued, many 2000s kids can attest to that.