Thursday, September 8, 2016

Florida Walmart, Texas Mattress Store "Celebrate" 9/11 With, Um, Interesting Gimmicks

This probably wasn't the best way to homor 9/11 
I suppose their heart was in the right place.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some people at a Panama City Beach, Florida Walmart, and the local soda distributor, came up with a striking way to "honor" the memory of 9/11.

So they constructed in the store the two World Trade Center towers built out of Coke Zero packages, notes the Associated Press.

The backdrop of the American flag was made with red regular Coke, silver Diet Coke and blue Sprite. A banner above the display that read "We will never forget" with the Coke and Walmart logos completed the look.

Why does this kind of weird, tacky thing always seem to happen in Florida?

Of course right away there was (surprise!) a backlash. A lot of people were appalled.

Others mocked it:

"We will never forget.....These great rollback prices y'all!" was one Twitter reaction.

Amid the hubbub the Coca-Cola company apologized and said the display was meant to honor local firefighters and support that organization's upcoming event.

The store and the distributor said they never intended any disrespect, which I believe, but what the hell were they thinking?

Well, they were probably thinking more than the folks at a Texas mattress store. They decided to hold a mattress sale, and did quite a little TV ad that you can see in the video at the bottom of this post.

As the Dallas Morning News tells us:

"Store manager Cherise Bonanno says that there's no better way to remember the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks than the sale, which offers any size mattress for the price of a twin mattress. Two employees stand in front of a pair of towers of mattresses and an American flag.

At the end of the video, which has since been removed from the store's Facebook page, Bonanno swings her arms and the employees tumble into the mattress towers, knocking them over. 

Banana shrieks, then turns to the camera and says, "We'll never forget."

Well, it's hard to forget the mattress ad you're about to see. Do you think it's a bit much?

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