Creative Commons license icon

Tony the Tiger's silent Twitter exodus blamed on furries, but advertising laws more probable cause

Edited as of Wed 7 Jun 2023 - 18:55
Your rating: None Average: 4.7 (23 votes)

Tony the Tiger has fled Twitter, and furries are to blame. At least that is how the story is told on Huffington Post’s Ashley Feinberg in her article about the mascot’s disappearence from social media. It talks about the cereal mascot’s unfortunate run in with some very thirsty furry fans, who made it a habit of bogging his social media responses with sexual innuendo and sometimes more blatant passes. Back when this started to occur, the cereal mascot began to ban furries at random, even if they were not engaging in the activity of coming onto the fiction character.

When this made the news rounds back in early 2016 it was known as “#TonyTigerGate”, in honor of the internet’s tendency of putting the gate suffix on anything even the slightest bit controversial that most normal people don’t actually care about. It would be overly dismissive to claim that it wasn’t a big topic of discussion in the fandom about public decorum and our relationships with corporations back when it occurred.

But in regards to this recent turn of events, Ashley uses her article to claim that Tony the Tiger’s account was replaced by the less furry account called simply Frosted Flakes in order to douse the horny furries in cold milk. But, further investigation reveals a far more intriguing story. One of a mascot caught in an international assassination plot against his very life. Not a story of a company’s combat against the internet’s lusts, but one of a government’s fight against glutton of the youths of their respective nations and the mascots used to stimulate that hunger.

The War on the Mascot

In February of this year, the New York Times published a piece discussing how Tony and other prominent cartoon animal mascots of snack foods were put in the crosshairs of the Chile government. The piece by Andrew Jacobs talked about how in the face of the rising obesity rates in the youth of the South American country the government has started to put forth measures to fight sugary and salty snacks. Trix the Rabbit and Tony the Tiger were just casualty on this war against gluten. The boxes that once bore their handsome mugs now simply a picture of a product along with the name.

As time passed, this rebellion against the striped mascot and his kind was not content to be contained to just Southwest Hemisphere. The political heat for Tony Tiger arrived this spring in the United Kingdom where similar proposals against sugar peddling spokes-animals found its way into the public discourse. This is at around the time when the Huffington Post writer noted that Tony made his final statements as “RealTonyTiger” on Twitter (May 2018). In this, it is looking more likely that there is going to be an increased press to make mascots like Tony the Tiger the next Joe Camel.

Though this it may be a bit of an overstatement by the Huffington Post that over thirsty furs were the primary cause of Kellogg’s decision to abandon the mascot driven account; it could have been part of the decision process, but it seems more likely that the company is simply reacting to a changing law landscape. To make sure they are not allowing their social media accounts to run afoul of any country’s laws against utilizing such mascots like Tony the Tiger to sell their sugary cereals, even if they can still appear on the boxes in the United States.

In fact, given that the very same tweets that were under Tony the Tiger's account were simply moved to the new Frosted Flakes accounts highlights this as the primary purpose. All the crass tweets still exist on this new account and were not deleted. In light of this it seems a fit of irony that the sugary cereals being pedaled by Tony were seen as more a danger to children than the inappropriate tweets found in responses to him on his Twitter feed. In the end, I suppose in the face of modern law, adult innuendo is temporary, but diabetes is forever.

Comments

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (26 votes)

Certainly interesting stuff on the legal side but also depressing. Governments are just trying to control everything. It's also kind of a stupid approach to ban those sorts of adverts. Here's the thing, children don't have jobs and earn money. You'd probably be hard pressed to find any children going out with whatever pocket money they do get and buying breakfast cereals. If there's a childhood obesity issue that you want to solve, then perhaps start with the people that actually buy the food and give it to the children.

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

Your rating: None Average: 3 (26 votes)

Children indeed don't have jobs or money, and that's why advertising to them has never driven sales.

/S

Your rating: None Average: 3 (22 votes)

You are absolutely wrong about that. Parents buy things for their kids because the kids were advertised to. When I was a kid I saw lots of advertisements for products and wanted them and my parents bought them for me, only for me to discover that the products were terribly disappointing. Kids do not understand how advertisements manipulate and trick them, and even most good parents sometimes buy things for their kids that they really shouldn't just because the kid wants it.

Your rating: None Average: 3.1 (23 votes)

The /s was indicating I was being sarcastic.

Your rating: None Average: 3 (21 votes)

I have never seen that symbol before.

Your rating: None Average: 1.2 (23 votes)

It is an interesting statement on control you have there. You yourself have a a great fondness for control, especially controlling others.

Your rating: None Average: 1.6 (27 votes)

Imagine being dense enough to play the lolbertarian laughingstock who'd condone marketing booze, nicotine, hell just sell crack to kids because "governments control everything".

The Beetis is a public health epidemic and the delivery method benefits from massive government subsidy. One can't have subsidized HFCS sweetener in your cake, and eat the whole thing for Ayn Rand's birthday too. Corporations externalizing their harm at public expense doesn't just deserve "but what about traditional family values" bullshit non-solution.

In fact a skeptical/smart thinker might even suspect it gets dumbed down to personal behavior issues, and the regulation issue has been overlooked on purpose, because corporations love deflecting corporate responsibility with talk of values and culture war. Kind of like they back household recycling instead of talking about the massively dominating amount of industrial pollution.

They're smart enough to know that consumers know when someone's pissing in their cereal though. Kellogg's paid for mom marketing about them removing HFCS because they saw this coming. But who needs candy for breakfast at all?

Typical manipulation, the media generation gets marketed to death and then blamed for received desires getting in the marketers way. They even have stooges helping deflect blame. Furry millenials ruin everything!

Well they shouldn't have drawn Tony so sexy. (That's our job.) Of course it's just funny to see furries macking on Tony's royally hot tail. Good work Sonious on pointing out the emperor's lack of clothes.

For a bunch of links about #Tonytigergate try here http://dogpatch.press/2016/01/29/tonytigergate-daily-show/

Your rating: None Average: 4.9 (21 votes)

As a bonus, this is the most entertaining read around Tony the Tiger I ran into during my research for this article:
https://www.lawrentian.com/archives/1012647

Your rating: None Average: 2 (21 votes)

They could just make Frosted Flakes have less sugar

Your rating: None Average: 4.4 (21 votes)

Unfortunately, unhealthy food is simply a big part of our culture, and the big companies want to keep it that way so that they don't have to change their products.

Your rating: None Average: 4.7 (22 votes)

There are already many different kinds of corn flakes in the market.

Your rating: None Average: 4.6 (21 votes)

They could just use cartoon animals, exciting marketing, colorful packaging, and strategic shelf placement to market those to children

Your rating: None Average: 4.7 (19 votes)

But then adults who have no taste wouldn't buy them.

Your rating: None Average: 1.1 (22 votes)

All of them, have a common intent in their invention, to stop little boys everywhere from working the gherkin

Your rating: None Average: 4.6 (21 votes)

Hahahaha! 'But diabetes is forever', nice writing.

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <b> <i> <s> <blockquote> <ul> <ol> <li> <table> <tr> <td> <th> <sub> <sup> <object> <embed> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <dl> <dt> <dd> <param> <center> <strong> <q> <cite> <code> <em>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This test is to prevent automated spam submissions.
Leave empty.