Dan Snyder‘s infirm theme park chain, Six Flags, announced not long ago it was cutting back on its advertising outsourcing as part of a budget slash.
Every penny helps, since Six Flags is over $2 billion-with-a-b in debt.
But perhaps the company coulda used those extra eyeballs looking at the ads produced for this year’s high season before letting ’em hit tv sets. Because the spots they ended up with —- as part of a campaign featuring an Asian guy with some sort of accent screaming “More Flags! More Fun!” — are being called things way worse than dumb on blogs and message boards.
Like: “Racist.”
Among those tagging the Six Flags ad campaign with the R word are bloggers Angry Chinese Guy and Angry Asian Man.
Here’s part of Angry (and, judging solely by his sporadic blogging, Kinda Lazy) Chinese Guy’s takedown of the Six Flags spots:
The Asian guy, of course, has an accent and does not properly pronounce the words correctly. He doesn’t even speak in complete sentences! He just barks out short phrases. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty damn racist…We want more Asian representation in the media, but damn if this is all we’re going to get, then forget it. The saying goes something like “Bad publicity is still publicity”…fuck that. This only furthers the stereotypes of Asian people and we really don’t need this. This damn commercial puts us back a few years. It tries to play off of the Japanese commercials where the guy pops up (just as this guy does) and sells a product. How often have we seen this type of satire? LOTS. Now Six Flags is taking this ignorance nationwide, helping to deliver this stereotypical portrayal of Asians into households everywhere!
The “More Flags!” screamer is the first pitchman Six Flags has had since Mr. Six, who was deep sixed by Snyder shortly after he took the chain’s reins in 2005.
Nobody ever called Mr. Six racist. “Pedophile” was thrown his way a lot, however.
Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.