The New Brunswick, N.J., healthcare colossus during the weekend began running the Internet ad, geared toward mothers who experience back pain from carrying their babies in slings, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Viewers objected via blogs, the video-sharing site YouTube and the social-messaging tool Twitter, calling for a boycott of the medicine because the ad was insensitive to women's pain and the method of carrying babies, the Journal said.

The company pulled the ad from the Motrin Web site, apologizing on that site and the company's consumer blog.

"It was meant to engender sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their kids, but did so through an attempt at humor that missed the mark and many moms found offensive," Kathy Widmer, vice president of marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, wrote on Johnson & Johnson's consumer blog.

The company said it also was pulling the ad from a scheduled run in magazines.