The creme colors of the rainbow Oreo do not exist, but the controversy it whipped up was real. On June 25, Kraft Food posted the gay pride Oreo on the cookie's Facebook page, and garnered tens of thousands of comments (both positive and negative) from Oreo fans.
Tiffany Hsu of The Los Angeles Times wrote:
It’s not the stack of six crème patties that’s whipped up a frenzy at Oreo’s official Facebook page: It’s that together, they form a rainbow in celebration of gay pride.
The image of the multi-layered Kraft cookie appears above a date – June 25 – and the word “pride.” A caption declares “Proudly support love!” The cookie isn’t available for purchase.Of the profile’s nearly 27 million fans, more than 154,000 liked the Pride post. Not all the nearly 20,000 comments, however, were quite as supportive.
“Bye Bye OREO!,” wrote user Jeni Friedersdorf. “Why can’t companies stay neutral on such things?” A few quoted the Bible; several swore to boycott the snack.
In response came an outpouring of Oreo love. One user, Matthew Merix, wrote: “Homophobes = tacky. Kraft Foods = progressive. Cookies = AWESOME.” The debate quickly spilled onto the rest of Oreo’s Facebook profile and also onto Twitter.
But was it just a cynical marketing ploy? Be prepared for more "gayvertising," said Dan Zak of The Washington Post:
The rainbow-colored Oreo graphic unveiled for LGBT Pride month proves at least one thing: Gays are just as susceptible to clever marketing as straights. At long last! Equality under commercialization.
The graphic was posted Monday evening on Oreo’s Facebook page and drew more than 52,000 shares and 177,000 likes in 24 hours — a robust social-media response that amounts to free advertising for Oreo, which is made by Nabisco, which is a subsidiary of Kraft Foods, which, with annual revenues of $54.4 billion, is the planet’s second-larget food company and doesn’t really need your pro-bono assistance with brand expansion.