After complaints that it inappropriately displayed the Mexican flag in ads in Europe for its new Tex-Mex style "Texican Whopper," Burger King apologized and said it would change the campaign.

WalletPop reported on the ad Tuesday, touching off a lot of comments from readers on both sides of the issue.

The ads featured a squat Mexican nicknamed "Just a Little Bit" draped in his country's flag next to a tall American cowboy. Mexico's ambassador to Spain said posters released in Europe inappropriately displayed the Mexican flag, whose image is protected under national law. He requested the ad campaign be discontinued, according to a Reuters story.

Here's the ad as captured on YouTube:

Burger King said the ads were meant to show how influences from the southwestern United States and Mexico can mix, and weren't meant to poke fun at Mexican culture. It said it would replace them as soon as commercially possible.

"Burger King Corporation has made the decision to revise the Texican Whopper advertising creative out of respect for the Mexican culture and its people," it said in a statement.

"The existing campaign falls fully within the legal parameters of the United Kingdom and Spain where the commercials are being aired and were not intended to offend anyone," the company said.

Burger King had a controversial ad in the United States late last year, called "Whopper Virgins" where people in remote areas of the world taste-tested Whoppers and Big Macs. It upset some people who didn't like that the fast-food company was taking its food to the far corners of the earth to people who didn't need it or didn't want it.