An animal near and dear to the Gothamist heart has been embroiled in a Super Bowl controversy! This year's wardrobe malfunction is now the debate over an animated ad from SalesGenie.com that features pandas.
During the commercials, two pandas discuss how to stay in business while speaking with Chinese (English-as-a-second-language) accents. There is also one panda who speaks in non-accented English. After the growing criticism (even College Humor dubbed it "the first commercial to offend over 1 billion people"), Salesgenie CEO Vin Gupta - who wrote the panda ad and his company's other Super Bowl ad with the South Asian man - told the NY Times the panda ad would be withdrawn.
“We never thought anyone would be offended,” said Mr. Gupta, who developed and wrote both commercials himself.
“The pandas are Chinese,” he said. “They don’t speak German.”
Still, “if I offended anybody,” Mr. Gupta said, “believe me, I apologize.”
Dude, if he produces an ad with a baby polar bear for next year's Super Bowl, it better have an accent straight out of Nuremberg! Still, the ad with Ramesh (who mentions his seven children) will still be shown, and Gupta ("who described himself in the interview as half-Indian and half-Jewish") said, “People have been making fun of my accent for years. And I love it.”
Did you think the ad was racist? We just thought it was just terrible first and offensive second. It now sounds more misguided, in the same way trying to use "ching chong" as fake Chinese isn't the greatest idea. And after the jump, our video of two pandas fighting over a shirt.
