Is This Banned Zombie Commercial REALLY That Bad?

Apparently citizens of Norway are much less tolerant of zombies and what airs on TV compared to those of us in the United States. Back in 2012, sporting goods retailer, XXL, ran the following zombie themed commercial in an effort to garner the attention of a younger audience. Viewers reacted with disapproval and XXL ended up pulling the commercial from family orientated programming airing before 9:00 pm. You can watch the commercial here:

My initial thoughts are this zombie commercial is pretty tame. It has decent production value and it’s somewhat comical . . . even if it doesn’t make much sense. Zombies attack with sporting goods? I’m not sure zombies are going to bother attacking the living by driving golf balls. Heck I’m a living breathing human with a decent command of my nervous system and normal voluntary skeletal muscle control and I still can’t manage to hit a golf ball off a tee with any sort of consistent accuracy! 😉

All kidding aside, this commercial just seems pretty ho-hum from my jaded American point of view. This certainly doesn’t seem like anything we’d consider offensive or inappropriate here in the U.S. I see MUCH worse than this when flipping through basic cable after school with my son. I see a ton of commercials that play during cartoons that have NO business being aired when and where they are. I’d welcome this zombie commercial over much of what I see.

That being said, the XXL zombie commercial caused a mini uproar with Norwegians. Viewers considered the commercial inappropriate, violent, “irrelevant”, “vulgar”, “stupid” and just plain unacceptable for airing during family oriented programming.

This commercial (which, ironically, was shot in America) seems like something most of us in the U.S. wouldn’t bat an eye at. People in Norway didn’t appreciate it and good for Norwegians for speaking up and good for XXL for actually listening! They promptly decided to stop airing the commercial during family oriented television programs and pulled it from spots airing before 9:00 pm. I’m not sure why all the related stories I read insist on saying the commercial was “banned”. Based on the related stories we read it sounds like XXL simply chose to listen to the people and made a choice to “ban” the commercial from airing during early family oriented program themselves. That being said we aren’t beyond joining in on the sensationalism 2 years late…and we choose to use the misleading term as well. It’s “journalism” at its finest!

Now here’s my take. If you or your child are overly sensitive you could choose to see this 2 year old zombie commercial as offensive. If I try hard enough I suppose I could be offended that a golf club swinging corpse lost his upper limbs. Or I could choose to see the positive aspects of this little video promotion. The commercial clearly depicts a sense of community and teamwork It also promotes getting off the couch and going out and picking up some sporting good equipment. Sure there is a little gore and some pretend violence against fictional undead hordes. I’d much rather sit and talk to my child about this zombie commercial than try to explain what airs during commercial spots here in the U.S. I shouldn’t need to explain to a 4 or 5 year old what “an erection lasting more than 4 hours” is. I also have no interest in trying to explain away what those two people were doing in bed or why the half naked men and women need to be half naked on TV. A little zombie fun? I’ll take that any day.

What are YOUR thoughts? Is this commercial inappropriate or offensive? Was the criticism of Norwegian viewers warranted? Was it all just a publicity stunt? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below!