The ad is part of the debut campaign by Pot Noodle's new agency Mother, designed to pull the brand back from the provocative positioning it had adopted in recent years and which resulted in many complaints to the watchdog.
The ad opens with a voiceover saying: "This is Crumlin, jewel of the Welsh Empire, for beneath these hallowed hills lies fuel, not coal or oil but pure Pot Noodle", and shows miners walking across fields and then down a mine ready to extract Pot Noodle.
The voiceover continues: "It's hard work working down in the noodle mine. This is where men are men. So let us give thanks to Welsh men like Emelyn Iffans, Idrys Howells and Clewin Craddock. For they keep going to keep you going."
Mother told the Advertising Standards Authority the ad uses humour and exaggeration to celebrate the fact that Pot Noodle has actually been produced in a factory in the Welsh town of Crumlin since 1977, and many employees are ex-miners or from mining families.
The ASA said Welsh miners were a "well-established stereotype" and they were depicted in the ad as "brave and hard-working" rather than in a derogatory way. It believed the noodle mine was the main object of humour in the ad.
"We concluded the ad was not offensive or racist towards the Welsh," it said. The brand's current tagline is "fuel of Britain", which is reflective of the brand's position and the former place that coal had.
The decision is good news for Pot Noodle owner Unilever Bestfoods, which is trying to steer the brand away from its previous positioning of being a naughty pleasure.
In 2002, Pot Noodle was banned from calling itself "the slag of all snacks" on TV, even after the 9pm watershed. In 2005, the ASA found its radio ads in breach of its code because they were sexually suggestive and broadcast at a time when children were likely to be listening.
It followed this with another sexually suggestive ad. Later in 2005, 620 viewers complained about a TV ad asking "Have you got the Pot Noodle horn?". The ad showed a man walking into a bar with a bulge in his trousers, which turns out to be huge hunting horn that he pulls out and blows. However, the ASA rejected the complaints.
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