Here at hecklerspray towers, we thought we were the only ones terrified to death by that BBC Digital commercial.

You know the one – it features a godforsaken floating mass of disembodied heads combining to create one hideous whole, which then using its evil giant mouth to babble about how great the BBC is and everything.

The most disturbing aspect – and the part that made hecklerspray leap from the couch screaming "dear god, get the military on standby" – was that, towards the end of the advert, the satanic creation is quite clearly heading for the nearest city.

Turns out, however, that we weren’t the only ones upset by all of this.

The BBC trailers have generated a total of 1,300 complaints from people left shaken and disturbed by the whole ordeal – one of them even describing the advertising campaign as "disturbingly psychotic".

So – after scaring the poo-poo out of an entire nation and possibly mentally scarring a generation of children – the BBC has finally bowed to public pressure and ‘dropped’ the adverts. Except they won’t quite put it like that.

Oh no: apparently the advert trails have finished "slightly early" after "achieving its goal".

It’s goal? What the hell kind of ‘goal’ was that – to provoke a million nightmares about the unstoppable advance of a soul-stealing demon-creature ripped straight from the bowels of Hades?

Nice one, guys. Why not do a follow-up campaign in which an army of skeletal Hell-hounds attack a branch of Mothercare, tearing apart anybody they suspect of not listening to Radio 4?

Trying to justify themselves, the BBC said:

"We have been very conscious that some viewers disliked the nature of the trail, although clearly it was not our intention to offend.

Which could arguably be translated as:

"We are so, so sorry. Really. Christ only knows what we were thinking. I mean … look at it. Just look. A gigantic flying eyeless uber-beast? Who in the hell thought that was a good idea? Jesus."

Or something like that. We expect.

Read More:

BBC Drops ‘Digital Face’ Trails - BBC News

[story by C J Davies]