Skittles Lawyers Gearing Up For Pride Month with Thousands of Cease & Desist Orders
Candy Giant Demands Immediate Withdrawl As Battle Over Rainbows Heats Up
“Not This Year, Motherf***ers!”, yells a man triumphantly holding up a few sheets of rolled-up paper. Around him, a thunderous cacophony explodes and a chant emerges from the chaos: “Take It Back! Take It Back!”
The scene was much more subdued earlier in the day when I spoke with the man leading the charge, Mike Skittle, the grandson of the founder of Skittles, Incorporated, about this year’s efforts to keep Corporate America from muscling in on their territory.
“Look, I don’t ever want this to be seen as some anti-gay thing, okay? Skittles has always been a brand of inclusivity. We changed the recipe to make our candy VEGAN for crying out loud…” Mr. Skittle tosses me a bag as I sit across from him, “It’s right there on the label.” I read the label, and he was right, no animal products. “We are just tired of Corporate America trying to lift the goodwill WE put into marketing the image of rainbows all year. When people think of rainbows, they think of two things, and one of those things is SKITTLES. Taste the Rainbow, right? That’s us.”
As our conversation continued, Skittle described what he considers a backlash that comes every year from people oversaturated with rainbows, not from Pride, but from the corporate branding of Pride. “And we want to help change that… …so we got the lawyers involved.” He moved over to the big window in his office that would generally look down into the fields where the Skittles are harvested, and instead row after row of tables are set up with lawyers frantically clacking away at keyboards. “There are hundreds of them working on this. We laid off 90% of our workforce to hire these guys, the rest are actually lawyers that were already employed by us as confectioners helping to produce our quality treats.”
“We just want to help take back the symbol of Pride from these corporate thieves, and if we are also protecting our own image, that’s a bonus.”