Fiona Onasanya, a former Labour Party MP in the UK has all the smoke for Kellogg's when it comes to their choice of mascots for their cereals. On Monday (June 15th), Onasanya, who was sentenced to three months in prison back in January of 2019 after she was found guilty of "perverting the course of justice" by lying to police about a speeding ticket, took to Twitter to bring a particular issue to light. Noting that she'd only decided to make the issue public as Kellogg's had yet to get back to her regarding the matter, she questioned why the company uses Snap, Crackle, and Pop as the mascot for Rice Krispies, but for the chocolate version, Coco Pops, they use a monkey.
"Kelloggs UK, as you are yet to reply to my email - Coco Pops and Rice Krispies have the same compòsition (except for the fact CP's are brown and chocolate flavoured)... so I was wondering why Rice Krispies have three white boys representing the brand and Coco Pops have a monkey?" she asked.
She then went on to point out that considering John Harvey Kellogg, the brother of Kellogg's founder Will Keith Kellogg and inventor of Corn Flakes, founded a US eugenics foundation and was in favour of racial segregation, it wasn't totally out of line to mention it.
“Well, given John Harvey Kellogg co-founded the Race Betterment Foundation (the Foundation's main purpose was to study the cause of and cure for ‘race degeneracy’), it would be remiss of me not to ask....”
“It’s important that we are all talking more about how we can build racial equality," said a spokeswoman for Kellogg's. “Kellogg stands in support of the black community. We do not tolerate discrimination and believe that people of all races, genders, backgrounds, sexual orientation, religions, capabilities and beliefs should be treated with the utmost dignity and respect."
“The monkey mascot that appears on both white and milk chocolate Coco Pops was created in the 1980s to highlight the playful personality of the brand," the spokeswoman explained. “As part of our ambition to bring fun to the breakfast table, we have a range of characters that we show on our cereal boxes, including tigers, giraffes, crocodiles, elves and a narwhal.”
