Cereal giant Kelloggs has been accused of racism by a very unhappy customer, after he noticed something untoward on a box of their food.
Saladin Ahmed spotted that on his box of Corn Pops, there was an illustration featuring hundreds of the pops going about their day-to-day business at a shopping mall.
Some of them are playing games, some are skateboarding, some are shopping, and others are taking selfies.
However, only one of them appeared to have brown skin – and he happened to be the janitor, cleaning the floor.
Saladin posted the image on Twitter, where it quickly gathered over a thousand retweets, plus thousands of replies and supportive likes.
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He captioned the shot: “hey @KelloggsUS why is literally the only brown corn pop on the whole cereal box the janitor? this is teaching kids racism.”
He followed the tweet up with another that read: “yes its a tiny thing, but when you see your kid staring at this over breakfast and realize millions of other kids are doing the same…” [sic]
In fairness to the cereal manufacturer, it responded quickly, writing back: “Kellogg is committed to diversity & inclusion. We did not intend to offend – we apologize. The artwork is updated & will be in stores soon.”
Saladin then replied: “Genuinely appreciate the rapid response,” and appeared to put the matter behind him.
Kelloggs have been in hot water as recently as 2016, when their adverts claimed Special K cereal was “full of goodness” and “nutritious”.
But they were slapped down by the Advertising Standards Authority, who deemed their sugary cereals more of a health risk than a benefit.
Kelloggs were then forced to change the advert to remove any mention of its so-called healthy properties.
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And elsewhere in the world this week, a Brazilian toilet paper company was reprimanded this week for creating an advertising campaign about black toilet paper, captioning their campaign: “Black is beautiful.”
Unfortunately, they used a white model named Marina Ruy Barbosa, wrapped in the loo roll, as the image to accompany the slogan, leading to an outcry.
Come on guys, you’re gonna have to think your adverts through a bit harder in future!