Italians mock McDonalds' culturally insensitive anti-pizza advert

When the waiter asks which pizza he would like, a young boy exclaims “Happy Meal!”

McDonalds has seen a drop in its global sales (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Italians are up in arms after McDonalds aired an advert suggesting that children prefer happy meal burgers to pizza.

McDonalds, who has seen its global sales plummet in the last year, produced the following advert, which predictably went down badly in Italian regions such as the home of pizza itself, Naples.

The 20–second-video features a family ordering food in a pizzeria.

When the waiter asks which pizza he would like, a young boy exclaims “Happy Meal!”

The next shot is of the family seated happily in McDonalds, followed by an Italian voice over, which says: “Your child has no doubts. Happy Meal, still 4 euros.”

“When I first saw it, I couldn’t help laughing, for how ridiculous the commercial is,” recalled Eduardo Pagnani, co-owner of Pizzeria Brandi, one of the most famous pizzerias in Naples., according to the Washington Post.

“Then I realized that they were denigrating pizza to promote their product. The commercial is unfair and misleading.”

Pagnani described Italian children preferring hamburgers to pizza as a sort of “blasphemy.”

The commercial has led to the creation of YouTube spoof videos, a Change.org petition and a social-media hashtag (#happypizza), using which Italians can show how wonderful their national dish, pizza, really is.