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According to eurweb
Advertisers have been sort of abusing Hip Hop to catch a target audience, but it looks like Duncan Hines has taken it too far.
The company is currently promoting their microwavable Amazing Glazes with a new ad called, “Hip Hop Cupcakes.”
In the ad, a set of vanilla cupcakes gets topped with chocolate glaze and then turns into cartoon characters that resemble racist minstrel imagery to some.
A blogger at The Source put the company on the chopping block:
“The racial component can’t be overlooked,” he writes. “It doesn’t matter that they’re cupcakes; the fact that they start rapping isn’t too far a stretch from making them in blackface. If the icing was in different flavors, or the lips weren’t so big and pink maybe we could give the ad a pass, but as it stands it’s a pretty poorly constructed and potentially racist ad. I’m the last person to be overly sensitive to media images, but the frothy mix of chocolate skinned cupcakes, bad hip-hop and a long media history of depicting stereotypical black people to sell food give me reason to question the intent if not the effect of this ad.”
After the heat and online debate, Duncan Hines pulled the ad.
