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Cheerios definitely has an agenda.

Caperton

And it’s to so thoroughly entrance you with this unbelievably cute little girl that you’re to the grocery store, through it, and back out in the parking lot before you realize you’ve bought six boxes of Cheerios and you don’t even like cereal. I mean, look at her.

[An adorable little GIRL approaches her MOM at the kitchen table, holding a box of Cheerios.]

GIRL. Mom?

MOM. Yes, honey?

GIRL. Dad told me that Cheerios is good for your heart. Is that true?

MOM. Says here that Cheerios has whole-grain oats that can help remove some cholesterol, and that’s heart-healthy.

[The girl smiles and runs off with the cereal. CUT TO DAD asleep on the couch. He stirs and sits up to find that the girl has poured an entire box’s worth of Cheerios on his chest, directly over his heart. Because she loves her dad and wants him to be healthy and y’all, SERIOUSLY.]

Now, some people (and God help us, there will always be some people) have become very upset that the ad features an interracial family. Because such families don’t exist in real life all over the place, of course, and certainly shouldn’t be represented on television, right? Like we needed further evidence that no amount of whole-grain oats will remove bigotry from the hearts of some horrible people.

But those folks can kiss my preternaturally toned pink ass, because the family looks like a family and the commercial is so sweet and that little girl is so earnest and objectively adorable that I can’t finish this sentence because my mouth is full of Cheerios, and where the hell did I get all these Cheerios?

58 thoughts on Cheerios definitely has an agenda.

  3. OMG! I was wondering when this commercial would be talked about. I figured either on here or other feminist blogs! 😀 I saw this commercial for the first time on tv yesterday, and the first thought that went through my mind was, “oh my goodness, what an adorable little girl!” The second thought was, “wow, I’ve never seen a mainstream type commercial with an interracial family. Neat!”

  4. Ah, Reddit. Definitely the cold sore of the internet.

    Seriously, though, that ad is fucking adorable. (Though anyone who’s parented would know that that smile was headed for some sort of trouble…)

  5. I’m surprised this is actually getting mainstream attention. I’m biracial. My kid is multiracial (well, tri-racial really, but that doesn’t mean to be a word now). People of mixed race (and their parents) have long been aware of prejudice like this, from a variety of sources. If I suppose there is something positive to bring out of this commercial, its that something a lot of people assumed didn’t exist or ignored has been brought to the surface finally, so it can be seen for what it really is.

    1. Yeah…I’m not surprised about the reaction…makes me sad, though. Seeing an interracial family on TV made my day, though. [Getting in car to go buy more Cheerios…]

    2. I showed the commercial to my 6-year-old and 10-year-old. I asked, “Notice anything?” The 6-year-old said, “The mother is sitting at the table doing work, and the father is lying on the couch.” The 10-year-old said, “The father had Cheerios all over him.” Then they went off to play.

      1. Your kids’ reaction shows that, altho this commercial is progressive (compared to other commercials) in the type of family it depicts, it subtly perpetuates stereotypes found in So Many commercials: the clueless, lazy husband and the industrious, suffering wife.

        1. Agreed that it’s not exactly subverting the industrious mom, lazy dad stereotype, but it does have the kid proactively taking out her breakfast cereal and sharing it with dad, rather than having mom set the table beforehand with all nine parts of this complete breakfast. Baby steps?

        2. My kids’ reaction shows that I have brainwashed them to recognize this stereotype.:-)

    1. By which I mean not trying to make some painfully awkward analogy between mixed “races” and mixed grains, and treating mixed-race families as normal and perfectly suited to “normal” Cheerios, rather than some odd fetish.

      1. Ooooooooh…that makes sense. I thought you just didn’t like multigrain Cheerios.

        2. Why is that? I don’t get it. Regular Cheerios are pretty healthy. Multi-grain Cheerios are sweet yucky stuff. That makes no sense.

  8. I already eat Cheerios for an average of two meals a day (grad school), so glad I found another reason to buy them in bulk!

  9. My landlord did the music for that commercial…for all Cheerios commercials…I wonder how much he earned for that little tinkle at the end…probably more than I make in a month.

    1. I’m sure he earned way more than I ever earned for any of my little tinkles.

      What?

  11. I have actually seen a fair number of interracial families, or at least couples, in commercials prior to this. However, in most of those cases, the difference in pigmentation is more subtle and the woman (when it’s a straight couple) is darker than the man. What’s new here is that it is specifically a white-looking woman with a black-looking man, which is the interracial pairing that raises racists’ ire more than any other. I had been wondering how long it would take before we saw this.

    1. Yes, that’s it. Black men are not supposed to own white women, since the menz can easily use all of them.

    2. I’ve seen a few interracial couple commercials, too, and I have found that the difference in pigmentation is always such that I have to pause the commercial and rewind to see if they are FOR SURE an interracial couple. Campbells soup has a commercial where the wife is black and the man who seems to be her husband or partner comes home and he is white, but its not CLEAR that they are, in fact, a couple. There are a few others where one person is obviously a person of color and the other person COULD be white or COULD be a POC. I’ve seen this with a few mom and child duos. I love all of those commercials, but this one? This one brought me to tears. I thought: my family is on TV!! That’s me! I’m on TV!

      1. I remember an eHarmony commercial supposedly showing real couples who met thru their service, featuring a black-looking woman with a white-looking man. I’m sure they did it on purpose, expecting a pat on the back for how accepting they are. I thought, You born-again bone-heads would never have the guts to show a couple that was the other way ’round, would you?

        (Sounds like I have a lot to say about commercials. Sorry, I watch a lot of tee vee . . . I watch it for a living in fact.)

        By the way, BuzzyBee, your comment is really touching. Thanks.

  12. I likely overlooked it, but where is the static coming from? Who’s complaining?

    2. I was wondering the exact same thing, then I read the adweek comments….sigh…At least the bigots are so incomprehensible that I can’t really figure out what their objections are.

      1. At least the bigots are so incomprehensible that I can’t really figure out what their objections are.

        As best as I can narrow it down, it’s one of these:

        “Black persons are shown being happy. FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

        “A white vagina that isn’t the property of a white penis? FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

        “Interracial couples just being happy? FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

        “….Ewwwww black kid.”

        1. “A white vagina that isn’t the property of a white penis? FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

          I haven’t read the comments but that was my first bet on where half this bigotry would spring from – if it had been a WoC and a white guy, the comments would be gross, but slanted differently.

          ::hurls::

        2. “A white vagina that isn’t the property of a white penis? FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

          I have to agree with TheKitteh’sUnpaidHelp that people find a white man with a WOC much more acceptable. My mum is white and my dad is a POC and people who I see perfectly accepting of a person with a white dad and WOC mother are completely gobsmacked by my very existence.

          “Interracial couples just being happy? FUNDAMENTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

          And I have seen too many people have this reaction. It usually comes out as “but the children will be so confused” or “think of the children” in face to face interactions.

          And thanks for summarizing the reactions so I don’t actually have to assault my eyes with them! Some days, I just don’t have the energy.

        4. I’m surprised they haven’t gone all the way on that site, though maybe they have on reddit or stormfront or freerepublic:

          A family with a black father who’s around to spend time with his children? A race-traitor mother who has a job and isn’t just sucking at the government teat on the government’s vast teat plantations? And look how the MSM is covering up the growing power of Shania Law over our dietary choices! Real patriotic White Americans eat nothing but bacon for breakfast!

        5. The one I saw was “I am totally not racist and I accept interracial couples, I just don’t want the liberal media ‘shoving it down our throats'”……sigh

      2. There’s also the classic camo-bigot

        “I’m totally fine with X, Y, and Z as long as they stay out of my face, cuz then it’s bad.”

      3. I have to confess that I’m actually enjoying debating some of the dipshit racist commenters on that thread, though that’s not to say I’m happy they’re commenting. They just have this strange notion that not enforcing “white” racial purity constitutes GENOCIDE (yes, always in all-caps).

  13. Hate to say it, but sugar is NOT healthy. Kind of ruins the goodness of the oats (for those who can tolerate them). But yeah, cute kid.

    1. Are Cheerios 40% high fructose corn syrup like most breakfast cereals? I thought it was actually one of the healthier brands.

  14. Cheerios have 1 gm sugar per serving.

    They are one of the healthier cereals on the market.

    And all sugar is not inherently unhealthy.

  15. I just love, love, love the look on Dad’s face as he wakes up.

    Caperton, I read “But those folks can kiss my preternaturally toned pink ass,” as “preternaturally pink-toned ass” and wondered for a second whether you mean you had a fluoro pink bottie or something! 😛

  18. Hey guys, make sure you’ve got your firewall on if visiting the linked article. I got a nasty bit of Malware pretending to be the government when I visited–still clearing off the lappy 🙁

  19. Wow, why is biracial marriage still a conversation in 2013? I’m stunned that this was even a concern for people.

    1. Heh, yea it is totally still a thing, 4 years ago my first gf broke up with me cus her parents threatened to disown her for dating a black guy.

      1. Parents who do that are riding for a fall. They’re just begging to be cut off from their kid sooner or later, and that’ll hurt them a lot more than it hurts her.

        Not that that makes it OK what she did to you. It’s just what it makes me think of.

    1. I see two, maybe three counting sock puppets, commenters throwing superficial copy-pasta around about White GENOCIDE sans even a rudimentary logical argument. Personally I like to argue with them, since for starters it reveals to everyone else how intellectually impoverished their racial separatism is, and it also sucks up their effort into defending implausible and fallacious arguments rather than defecating their copy-pasta on other innocent threads. That’s just me though.

  21. The one thing I don’t understand is the troll later downthread who claims to be in an interracial relationship but was still offended by this ad. Look for “Phil_J”

    1. I think that guy was either 1. making it up, or 2. someone once told him he was part Native American and he appropriates that part of his heritage whenever it’s convenient for him.

  23. Pingback: Amazing Cheerio’s ad parody features interracial queer couple, says fuck the haters

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