Paul Bunyan -- Obamacare salesman?

Oh, and his friend Babe the Blue Ox, too.

The famous folklore duo are assisting the state of Minnesota in recruiting residents into the state's Obamacare health exchange:

But not everyone in the North Star State is happy about it.  The Pioneer Press reports:

State officials on Sunday released details from an awareness campaign that shows the mythical lumberjack suffering humorous injuries while waterskiing, sledding, ice fishing and wielding an ax. The idea is to get people to think about the need for health insurance.

But Bemidji's Mayor Rita Albrecht took to the social media website Twitter early Monday to say she was "not impressed."

Albrecht criticized the "tackiness of some images" and said the company hired by the state to produce the campaign "doesn't get it."

"To have him be a doofus, it doesn't make sense for us," Albrecht said in an interview Monday morning. "We kind of think of Paul as stately and handsome and representing a proud era of timber production in our community."

In a weird turn, however, Albrech later recanted her negative remarks:

"When we first saw (the ads), we thought: What?" she said in a second interview. "But as we thought about it more, we think it's positive that people recognize Paul and Babe as important, and that people like that."

For the record, the state is spending $9 million on this advertising campaign in an effort to enroll about 1 million Minnesotans.