A charming Cheerios commercial featuring an interracial couple and their daughter generated such a strong racist backlash on YouTube that the comments section had to be closed.
Cheerios’ “Just Checking” commercial–which debuted on Wednesday–had been viewed over a quarter of a million times, garnering 4,090 thumbs ups, versus 689 thumbs downs as of Friday afternoon. According to Adweek, before the YouTube comments section was disabled on Thursday, the video was bombarded with remarks referencing Nazis, “troglodytes” and “racial genocide.”
Thankfully, Cheerios has remained unfazed by the racist backlash to the commercial. Camille Gibson, Cheerios vice president of marketing, told Gawker: “Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad. At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all.”
