Zombies are PC. No one has feelings toward a zombie that wants to eat your face. there are some people who will stand up for the right of Jihadists, so if you take your OBL print out to the range and start plugging him SEAL team six style, people might get upset.
Generic bad guy targets have gotten boring. Cue the Jake Zweig targets (of Top Shot), but there will be complaints against that, too.
As said, zombies are a substitute/ stand in for a real, more searious and more likely threat (despite how unlikely the threat really is).
The film and video game industry has a lot to do with Zombies in pop culture. the Walking Dead has a massive fan base, so do Romero or other zombie movies. The Left4Dead video game and other 1st person zombie shooters are massivelt popular, spawning special zombie modes in typical zombielss FPS. Shooting Nazi's (another less tangible PC threat) is fun, but shooting Nazi Zombies!! Fur reelz! Bonus points.
It's a way to get the younger generation into shooting sports. Other generations had indians and bandits, others had gangsters like Dillinger as the popular villian of the era. the zombie is todays sociallyacceptable popular villian. Allowable because it's fake, and not really going to hurt anyones feelings. We can't allow Arab appearing targets because of the majority/ minority effect. Can't offend anyone. But we can have undead jihadists, no problems there. Makes a lot of sense, no?
Anyway, it's a marketing gimick. Like when the price of sugar increases, new and different styles of candy and kids cereals hit the shelves. Well, speculation of rising costs of ammo and gun bans put new ammo on the market, and new guns and accessories on the shelves. Marketing 101. Cause the demand, inflate the demand, limit the market, reap the profits.
Should we as gun owners be telling vendors to cut this out or is it harmless? Does it hurt our cause?
Would manufacturers listen? We, as gun owners speak with our wallets. If you don't want to buy a limited run of Zombie max ammo because you don't support the gimick, don't.
I don't think it hurts our cause though. Nor does it really help in anyway, other than bringing young new shooters into the sport. Lets not be Fudds here and take up the my stuff don't stink and my stuff is better than your stuff attitudes. It's counter productive. We should be banding together as a shooting community, made up of people of all ages, cultures, background and experiences.