It isn't just people and guitars gently weeping for Prince. On Thursday, Cheerios tweeted a purple image featuring the words "Rest in peace," dotted with a Cheerio, to honor the late musician. Reaction on social media was fast and furious, with people accusing the company of trying to capitalize on his death. It "broke new ground in tastelessness" was one typical tweet. While others were more forgiving, "we didn't want the tweet to be misinterpreted, and removed it," says a rep.
The company 3M also tweaked its logo to purple and added a teardrop, though that met with similar complaints. "To be fair, both are Minnesota-based companies, and their tweets were genuine expressions of sadness for the loss of one of the state’s most famous residents," notes the Wall Street Journal. A post at AdWeek says the Cheerios image "felt like an ad," but it thought a Hamburger Helper tweet (since deleted) that used the company mascot was much worse. "A glove can only take so much sadness," read the tweet. Better received: NASA posted an image of a purple nebula, notes CNET. (More Prince stories.)
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