Apple Gets Tough With iPod Sex Toy Advertising.

I live in New York so there’s not much in the way of sex toys that I haven’t seen—sometimes in public.

Apple’s tizzy over the iGasm’s iPod-like advertising only serves to raise attention—if you know what I mean.

You gotta love it when free enterprise and high tech get together. Ann Summers is a UK-based web site that sells sex toys, including a vibrator that plugs into an iPod—if you know what I mean.

The vibrator in question, one of many, many, many to be found on the Ann Summers’ site, is appropriately called the iGasm, one of many such toys that help pass the time in a cubicle farm by day, or anywhere else by night.

The problem in question is the advertising that Ann Summers chose to push the iGasm toy. You guessed it. The ads look like Apple’s legendary iPod silhouette ads, TV and print.

Apple’s legal team has their knickers in a twitch and has asked Ann Summers to cease and desist. Perhaps its Ann Summers’s advertising folks who should cease and desist from frightening verbiage.

Why? iGasm is just an add on accessory for the iPod, right? Yes, and it looks like a great value. “Load up your iPod with killa choons and take your appreciation of music to a whole new level...” starts the advertising copy.

Wait. There’s more.

“Go at it hard and fast with a pound drum...” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. “Believe us when we say that full whack is PHENOMENAL.” Full what? Full whack? With a cockney accent that’s sure to be a full hoot.

Apple is probably well within their legal writes and rights to ask Ann Summers to cease and desist with the bad advertising copy and the obviously ripped-off graphic image of iPod ads of the past.

Still, I can’t help but worry that Apple may be squirting fuel on a flaming fire, providing Ann Summers with a free ride—temporarily with more advertising and promotion than is due.

Maybe Apple is just feeling the heat; so to speak. After all, the Mac and iPod maker has dozens of lawsuits in various stages of flame. Maybe they felt this was one legal battle they could win. After all, it’s in the UK, not the US. Apple’s done well in UK courts recently. Just ask The Beatles.