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Toned-down ads with Heidi Klum OK’d for Las Vegas airport

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Allegiant Air focuses its business on vacation spots. A jet flies by the Luxor Resort & Casino after taking off from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS >> Images of Heidi Klum will appear in an electronics and gift products company’s ads inside McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas after all.

The company that manages indoor advertising at the airport rejected an initial set of Sharper Image’s black-and-white shots featuring the scantily clad model, airport spokeswoman Christine Crews said.

Las Vegas-based Alliance Airport Advertising determined the images violated Clark County codes designed to protect families that pass through the airport.

But Sharper Image’s ad firm, Iconix Brand Group, submitted “amended proofs” on Thursday, Crews said, and all five ads were approved to run from Jan. 3-9 as the company requested.

Dari Marder, chief marketing officer of Iconix, criticized the reaction to the initial ads.

“We are shocked that the Sharper Image ads featuring Heidi Klum have been banned in Las Vegas — of all places,” she said in a statement. “We believe the campaign is tasteful, beautiful, and while sexy, not inappropriate in any way.

“The reaction to it has been fabulous to date and it is running in all forms of media without any issue.”

The initial ads showing Klum in various states of undress violated county codes that prohibit “the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering or any portion thereof below the nipple,” Yahoo celebrity news reported.

Crews said such give-and-take is common in advertising, and it was inaccurate to suggest the entire campaign was banned.

“While we are in Las Vegas, there are families that come through the airport and there are children that come through the airport,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “County codes are in place to serve the interests of everyone.”

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