Burger King pulled an ad showing people eating its Vietnamese burger with oversized chopsticks after it was called racist

• Burger King is under scrutiny for using giant chopsticks to advertise its "Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp burger" in New Zealand.
• Many social-media users argued that the ad used chopsticks as a comedy vehicle and was culturally insensitive.
• Some have compared the fast-food brand's commercial to the controversial Dolce & Gabbana ad campaign that showed a model eating Italian food with chopsticks.
• Burger King has since removed the ad from its official social media accounts.
• Visit INSIDER's homepage for more.

Burger King has come under fire for a recent advertisement that it briefly ran in New Zealand.

The brand rolled out a commercial for its new "Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp burger" depicting Burger King customers attempting to eat the new menu item with giant red chopsticks.

"Take your tastebuds all the way to Ho Chi Minh City with our Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp, part of our Tastes of the World range. Available for a limited time only," the initial caption for the ad read on the brand's now-deleted Instagram post.

Although Burger King has since removed the ad from its social media platforms, some Twitter users, including Maria Mo, captured a video of the controversial commercial.

Mo, or @mariahmocarey on Twitter, posted a clip after she came across the ad on her Instagram feed.

"I couldn't believe such blatantly ignorant ads are still happening in 2019, it honestly took me a second to work out what the heck I was looking at," Mo told HuffPost. "I was watching it thinking there must be some kind of layered twist ― only to realize, no, there was no twist, it really was that base level."

Many users on social media expressed their discontent with the ad, which they claimed used chopsticks as a comedy vehicle and was culturally insensitive.

According to The New Zealand Herald, the same Burger King advertisement was barred from distribution on television in March after New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority claimed that it was "enticing people to overeat" because it concluded with the words, "Just need another three."

Some compared Burger King's ad to the Dolce & Gabbana commercial that showed a model eating Italian food with chopsticks

In November 2018, the fashion house launched an ad campaign featuring a Chinese model eating traditional Italian food with chopsticks. Like Burger King, the brand removed its own controversial ad after it sparked backlash on social media.

Later, Dolce & Gabbana co-founder Stefano Gabbana allegedly responded to a critic of the ad with racist language via Instagram direct message, and brand leadership subsequently announced that a show in Shanghai was "rescheduled due to reasons" that were unspecified.

Read more:Dolce & Gabbana cancels Shanghai show after ad campaign and founder's Instagram DMs mocked Chinese culture

Representatives for Burger King did not immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

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