Ignoring Alfred E. Neuman's mantra of "What, me worry?" Circuit City Stores Inc. temporarily banished the irreverent Mad magazine from its stores' shelves for poking fun at the consumer-electronics retailer.

But the Richmond-based company said yesterday that "some overly sensitive souls at our corporate headquarters," after seeing the four-page spoof of "Sucker City," had the August issue removed from the 40 Circuit City stores that sell magazines.

"The parody of our newspaper ad in the August Mad was very clever," spokesman Jim Babb said. "Most of us at Circuit City share a rich sense of humor and irony, but there are occasional temporary lapses. We apologize for the knee-jerk reaction and have issued a retraction order. The affected stores are being directed to put the magazines back on sale."

The spoof features advertisements for items such as HDTVs and video games, including the Nintendo Wii "Guaranteed In Stock . . . if you're friends with an employee who hid it in the back for you. Otherwise, ooh, sorry, all sold out."

It also encourages readers to visit its new store "directly across the street from Best Buy" or "any of our other 600 stores directly across the street from 600 other Best Buys!"

The ads tout HDTVs by "Hibachi" at prices of $3,599.99, "which incidentally was featured in last week's flyer for four hundred bucks more. Pity the suckers who bought it then!"

Babb jokingly e-mailed: "As a gesture of our apology and deep respect for the folks at Mad magazine, we are creating a cross-departmental task force to study the importance of humor in the corporate workplace and expect the resulting PowerPoint presentation to top out at least 300 pages, chock full of charts, graphs and company action plans."

Babb, who said he sent a note to the magazine's editors offering a $20 gift card toward the purchase of a Wii, also defended Circuit City's sense of humor, pointing to a link of a commercial on YouTube produced by the company. The two-minute ad features college students using a mobile video camera to document some classic school pranks.

Only 40 of Circuit City's 700 stores sell magazines.

John Ficarra, the magazine's editor, said in a statement: "We at Mad were shocked and confused by this entire incident -- mainly because we had no idea that Circuit City even sells magazines. Nonetheless, we accept their apology but hold out hope that their gesture of a $20 gift card is only an opening offer."
Staff writer Louis Llovio contributed to this report.