The Olympic Games have long promoted more than the amateur athletic spirit. Sponsors this year sell pharmaceuticals, laptop computers and luxury watches, among other things, mostly to consumers outside of China. But there's something particularly sad about the way the games have been co-opted to push sugary treats inside the host country. Mars Inc., for example, used street sports events and other Olympic gimmicks to help grow sales of Snickers bars 75 percent in China this year, the Wall Street Journal reports for today's paper. Then there's Coke, which spread its tooth-eroding product into China's impoverished, soda-deprived rural provinces by attaching itself to the Olympic torch relay. That and some other local uses of Coke's $400 million in global Olympic advertising helped erode Pepsi's lead in China, the Journal reported on its front page Tuesday. Both Mars and Coke seem oblivious to the moral issues raised by their campaigns amid heightened scrutiny, in the U.S. at least, of obesity-linked products. If they're not more careful, American sugar purveyors may find themselves shackled in the fashion of cigarette makers. After the jump, a look at a scene from Mad Men, in which tobacco executives begin to grapple with the regulatory noose begin to close around their own advertising in the early 1960s.

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