Retro Arcade Game Maker ‘Surprised’ to See Its Product Crushed in Apple’s iPad Ad

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Apple‘s new iPad Pro ad — which went viral for not necessarily the right reasons — also caught the attention of the company that made one of the objects pulverized in a gigantic hydraulic press.

The “Crush!” commercial features a cameo by one of Arcade1Up‘s three-quarter-scale retro arcade game machines, albeit with a fictional game title (“Space Imploder”) affixed to the top.

The machine’s screen flashes “Game Over” as it is smashed by an industrial press — along with dozens of other things, including musical instruments, a TV, a record player, paint tubes, cameras and emoji stress-balls — to produce one of the new, ultra-thin iPads. “We were surprised to see one of our Arcade1Up Midway Legacy machines re-wrapped [and] crushed in the recent iPad Pro ad,” David McIntosh, head of brand and communications at Arcade1Up, said in a statement to Variety.

The tech giant’s ad was meant to be lighthearted — showing how the new iPads cram all of these things into a slim and shiny slab — but it ignited a swift backlash from Hugh Grant, Hollywood filmmakers and others, who saw it as glorifying the literal destruction of human creativity.