Skittles dumps its rainbow for a very gay reason
Skittles has waved goodbye to its distinctive rainbow for Pride Month – but there’s a good reason.
The Mars-produced product famous for its slogan “taste the rainbow” has adopted a new approach, with its packaging and sweets turned white-and-black for the month.
“During Pride, only one rainbow matters,” the company has explained.
“So we’ve given up ours to show our support.”
The company has pledged to donate 2p per pack to LGBT charities as part of the campaign, which it also conducted last year.
The monochrome packets are only available in Tesco stores.
And because all the rainbowless skittles look the same, every handful is a mystery, flavour-wise.
Julio Guijarro, a marketing director for Skittles’ parent company Wrigley UK, said: “The response to our #onerainbow (or Give The Rainbow) campaign at Pride in London 2016 was incredibly positive, so we were keen to get involved again.
“Our activity last year resulted in requests from across the world for colourless Skittles packs, so we’re really excited to team up with Tesco UK to launch the limited edition ‘rainbowless’ packs to show our support again for Pride and celebrate diversity and inclusion.”
In 2016, Skittles used an advert to tell Pride in London that it didn’t want to “steal your rainbow thunder,” adding that “only one rainbow deserves to be the centre of attention – yours.”
Many people seem thrilled with the move, because a company acknowledging and celebrating Pride is pretty great.
It’s @ExeterPride #ExeterPride2017 day (our local pride)! We’re celebrating with some limited edition rainbowless @Skittles #onerainbow ? pic.twitter.com/uP0081TCCm
— LGBTQReview (@LGBTQ_Review) May 13, 2017
Not just any @Skittles either, completely rainbowless ones! #tastetherainbow pic.twitter.com/P8RoNNjoTg
— Papa Tont (@Life_of_Tont) April 16, 2017
finally got my hands on some rainbowless skittles! #onerainbow #HappyPride pic.twitter.com/N6CyRnRKnr
— ?Harriet? (@SilentlyExists) June 11, 2017
i just saw an ad for rainbowless skittles i’m getting a bag.
prideee
— Y♡shi (@PurpleYoshi774) June 5, 2017
However, others have complained that by eliminating all colours apart from white, Skittles has made a troubling statement about race.
This is soooo fucking stupid.
Why should whiteness mean equality?!
Thats the fucking problem!
We will never have nor want whiteness!! pic.twitter.com/zatBSbSNDA— Tora Shae (@BlackMajiik) March 31, 2017
“All the lentils are white in celebration of Pride.” Sooooooo to celebrate equality they make white skittles…. how is that not racist?
— Chloe Cowan (@cowan_chloe) April 2, 2017
It is “that serious”. The normalization of whiteness is a problem because we live in a society where whiteness is considered the standard.
— phillip (@TrillestPhil) May 3, 2017
A Skittles spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “Any suggestion that this support for Pride is in any way racist is clearly wrong.”
At this point, most users on Twitter seem to be complaining about those complaining about the campaign, which is about right for Twitter.
Skittles has, however, refrained from promoting the campaign prominently on either its Twitter or Facebook pages.
The move by Skittles follows Facebook’s decision to provide a rainbow flag reaction, which you can find out how to access here.
And earlier this year, M&Ms characters Ms Green and Ms Brown seemed to announce that they were in a relationship with each other.
Watch the advert for rainbowless Skittles below:
