A new Cheerios advertisement has become the center of controversy simply because it features an interracial family.
The commercial aired on national television on Monday and was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday. However, by Thursday, the cereal company was forced to disable its YouTube comments section after receiving a number or racist comments, reports Gawker.
In the commercial, an adorable bi-racial girl asks her Caucasian mother to confirm whether Cheerios are good for your heart. The ad then cuts to her African-American father who awakes from a nap to find a huge pile of Cheerios resting on his heart. Although the commerical appears to be harmless, it received more than 700 dislikes (and more than 5000 likes) by late Friday. According to AdWeek, the comments section was filled with references to "Nazis, 'troglodytes' and 'racial genocide'" before it was shut down. Other viewers took to Cheerios' Facebook page to voice their support for the commercial.
General Mills reacted quickly to the negative comments as they began arriving in mid-week. After a Twitter user wrote on Wednesday about the "horrible, racist comments" on YouTube, a reply was sent from the official Cheerios Twitter feed that thanked him "for the head's up," adding, "They've since been removed."
Despite the mixed reaction, the company says it will not pull the commercial, which was produced by Saatchi & Saatchi in New York.
"Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad. At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all," Cheerios vice president of marketing, Camille Gibson, told Gawker.
Watch the ad below.
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