The California company whose Obama-esque target mannequin was taken down from a sales booth during the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston last month has two new mannequins for sale on its website. One is a “gun control lobbyist.” The other appears to refer to Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist and current MSNBC host.
The company, Zombie Industries, produces “life-sized tactical mannequin” targets, painted to look like “zombies,” that “bleed” and “mutilate” when shot. On the company’s website, “Gun Control Lobbyist” mannequins are currently for sale for $89.95 each,
“As a pro gun control lobbyist, this guy spent his days milling around Washington D.C. distorting the truth about guns & violent crimes,” the description on the product page reads. “He not only believed that firearms should only be in movies, he honestly thought law-abiding citizens had no right to protect themselves, their neighbors, or their nation against violent attackers.”
The company uses its product description pages to describe how each of its mannequin characters became a “zombie.”
“One night while headed home, our friend found himself face to face with a viscous Zombie,” the Gun Control Lobbyist page reads. “Being that he believed firearms served no purpose in self-defense, he was unarmed and knew he set himself up for something worse than becoming a victim… he was about to become easy Zombie pray! The result was an Undead Gun Control Lobbyist Zombie that is just begging to be put down.”
The description of a second new “zombie” target for sale on the company’s website, named simply “Al,” suggests it is supposed to be Sharpton.
“Poor Al he was a Sharp guy,” the product description reads. It continues:
Our pal Al went out for a moonlight drive by himself to clear his worried mind after seeing all the doom and gloom in the news. Sadly, his gas guzzling SUV ran out of gas on a lonely stretch of highway in a desolate and thickly wooded upstate area. Lucky for Al… a rogue trucker stopped by and offered a lift into town nearly 30 miles away. Little did Al know that this truck was hauling infected bodies from a classified government experiment and that this truck was going to fall victim to a bit of trouble itself. The full moon shined brightly through the windshield, as Al complained about complete nonsense, when all of a sudden a rotten, maggot infested face appeared from above the cab of the truck. The trucker slammed the brakes and jolted the wheel, causing the truck to tip over and its contents sprawled over the countryside. Both the driver and poor Al were still stuck in the cab when they saw them coming… nowhere to run, no one to call, they shook in fear and poor Al even cried… but sadly within minutes it was over. Once their screams for help were silenced, they were now one of them… the brainless ones.
The company does include a disclaimer on the product page saying that “[all] Zombie Industries’ products represent fictitious characters and are works of fiction. Names, characters, stories, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locales is entirely coincidental.”
As TPM reported last month, the Zombie Industries targets that bear enough of a resemblance to President Obama to get them removed from the NRA’s convention have appeared on two Discovery Channel shows in recent years.
Zombie Industries appears to be relishing the negative media attention. Its website touts all the news outlets that have mentioned its products (including TPM). And a female mannequin that used to be called “The Ex” has been renamed “Alexa.”
“New and improved thanks to the media coverage reported by the Huffington Post,” the product description reads.
