Nazi-tinged nostalgia cruise ads dropped

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GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- A Swedish ferry line pledged to revamp an advertising campaign for nostalgic visits to the Germany and Poland of the 1940s.

A number of potential customers have expressed doubts about just how fun the era of the Nazis really would be and whether those supposed good old days were an appropriate sales pitch.

Executives at Stena Lines agreed and said they would rewrite their direct-mail campaign, The Local.se said Sunday.

Stena's advertising campaign targeted potential customers according to the decade of their birth, including the 1960s, 1950s and 1940s. The pitch to the generation born during and right after World War II started out, "Hooray, you were born in the 1940s."

Things went downhill from there when the ad continued, "This was a delightful decade when lots of fun things happened -- and then you were born in the middle of it all!"

The idea was to encourage vacationers to bring the whole family for a pleasant voyage to ports in Germany or Poland; however the cruise line said it needed to change "an unfortunate wording."