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Controversy has accompanied Verizon Wireless' latest Droid phone ad that mocks Apple Inc.'s iPhone, but never actually mentions its rival.

The ad starts with a group of mesmerized people looking at a phone that is behind a glass case and asks, "Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?”

Then it says the Motorola Droid, which uses Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system, is "racehorse-duct-taped-to-a-Scud-missile fast."

It also shows what some critics are portraying as an anti-gay image of a group of fashionably dressed (and partially undressed) male statues getting hit with tomatoes.

The ad can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here.

A post by Kara Swisher on the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog slams the ad and is headlined, "Is the new droid ad anti-women and anti-gay or just plain idiotic? Actually all three!

VentureBeat rated the ad "just plain clueless," especially for "likening the Droid phone’s speed to that of the Scud missile, a not-very-fast Russian rocket used by Saddam Hussein’s regime no faxing 1 hour payday loans. A Scud killed 28 Americans at an airbase in Saudi Arabia in 1991. Other Scuds have killed lots more civilians in the Middle East."

Not all of the reviews have been negative, with many focusing on the cool look and humor of the spot.

But while saying he liked the ad, Stuart Turton of PC Pro wrote, that "when stripped to its barebones (the ad) actually says that the Droid is uglier than an iPhone, and… erm… well, that’s it. Funnily enough, it appears that by criticising the iPhone for placing style before substance, Verizon’s done exactly that."

Verizon's other Droid ads resulted in legal challenges by the iPhone's exclusive U.S. service provider, AT&T Inc., which were recently dropped. In those, Verizon took aim at AT&T's service and likened the iPhone to a misfit toy in a holiday-themed video.

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