Some folks are bemoaning whether we live in 1970 or 2012, regarding Toshiba Canada’s ads for its Excite tablets. Set in a clearly ‘oriental’-looking room, “Lucy” and her cleavage acclaim the advantages of the tablet, helped along by other close-up body shots and not-so-subtle jokes.

Apparently the ads for various Toshiba products were made in both English and French for Canada, and were posted on YouTube before promptly being made private. They feature plenty of shots of various regions of the woman’s body, along with awkwardly blatant product placement. As could be expected, there have been veritable hornets’ nests of arguments among the comments on these ads, ranging from, “How sexist!” to “These are just lame ads, but nothing out of the ordinary” to “Stop whining! Look at all the other examples of equivalent ads!” For your pleasure, if you care to see where you stand on the subject. And see below for a copy of the ad someone grabbed before they were taken offline. What do you think?