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The horror: Windows 7 Family Guy clips panned
A tie-in between Windows 7 and Family Guy was cancelled last month. Now we can see why...
Clips from Microsoft's cancelled tie-in with Family Guy have been released - and fans of the irreverent cartoon are horrified. The Family Guy special, which was supposed to air last month, would have been sponsored by Microsoft's new operating system Windows 7, but it was aborted after the computer giant noticed that the content of the planned show was "not a fit with the Windows brand".
Family Guy fans, used to a diet of fairly offensive humour, were teased with reports that the cancelled show would have featured jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest.
But judging by the newly released clips (see video above), the real reason for the tie-in's failure may have had more to do with the tameness of the sketches that involved Windows 7.
Peter Griffin, Family Guy's idiotic protagonist, is shown failing to spell Windows 7 at a spelling bee. And the show's psychotic baby, Stewie, demonstrates to the talking dog how Windows 7 is the perfect operating system to aid his plans for world domination.
In short, the clunky sketches are a far cry from Microsoft's promise when it first announced the tie-in of "unique Windows 7-branded programming that blends seamlessly with show content".
Family Guy viewers could see how the Windows 7 sketches are anything but a "seamless" fit with the show's usual fare of distinctly family-unfriendly jokes involving borderline racism, paedophilia and Stewie's frequent dreams of murdering his mother.
And the internet community seems to agree. Technology blog Gizmodo Australia proclaimed the scenes "even more horrible than I imagined", while The Next Web said: "Windows 7 + Family Guy = Horror. Here's the proof".
Judging by the popularity of the YouTube videos, it seems Microsoft has managed to squeeze as much publicity from the affair as it could, while Family Guy has suffered a severe knock to its credibility.
As a commenter pointed out when The First Post initially reported on the Family Guy-Windows tie-in, "The forbidden 'un-PC' cartoon will eventually be leaked on to YouTube and be watched by millions whilst Microsoft can disassociate themselves from any of the risky content".
It's just a shame there wasn't any risky content. ·
