Mountain Dew apologizes for ad via promoted tweet

Mountain Dew's controversial ad has been called the most racist commercial in history

If you were one of the lucky ones who got a chance to see the awful new Mountain Dew commercial before it was pulled for offending like, everyone—congratulations. You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren that this actually happened.

Now, not only has PepsiCo pulled the ad, Mountain Dew is literally paying the price: the company has been apologizing to consumers via promoted tweets—apologizing for making what many are calling the most racist ad in history—HISTORY.

Mountain Dew tweeted a message that’s decidedly less Xtreme than the company’s usual tone:

“Hey guys—made a big mistake, we’ve removed the offensive video from all our channels. #fail”

The commercial is the third installment in the “Felicia the goat” series, which features…a talking goat. The first commercial featured Felicia the goat (voiced by rapper Tyler, The Creator) beating up a waitress for not giving him enough Mountain Dew. Apparently, everyone loved it. For some reason. The second installment featured Felicia the goat escaping from the cops after getting pulled over for a DewUI (that’s a reach, but whatevs).

The third installment, however, took a turn for the worst. The commercial shows a lineup of black criminals—some in wife-beaters and do-rags—along with Felicia the goat. On the other side of the window, the battered and bleeding waitress is with a bunch of white cops trying to identify her attacker. While she’s scanning the line of men, Felicia is whispering threats, like “snitches get stitches,” and “keep your mouth shut, I’m going to get out of here and Dew you up,” etc. There’s also a creepy rape-toned moment in which Felicia (who is supposed to be a male goat, by the way) says “you shoulda gave me more…I’m nasty.”

The waitress ends up running out of the room screaming. Which is obviously hilarious. Talking goat? Knocks ‘em dead. Goat getting a DewUI? Kills ‘em. Violence against women? SOLID GOLD.

Everything about the ad was awful, starting with the fact that the lineup featured stereotypically scary-looking black criminals. And then there’s the fact that the victim is a battered and terrified white woman. Add to that the fact that almost all of the cops in the room with her are white (except for one fellow hidden in the shadows, whose face you never see), saying things like “let’s nail this sucker.”

Yeah, the whole thing was bad. And a team of marketing executives somewhere was like “omg, this is awesome. They’re gonna love this, bro!”

People didn’t love it. And then economist and social commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins weighed in on the commercial, calling it “arguably the most racist commercial in history.”

Tyler, The Creator lashed out at critics on Twitter (in which he confusingly capitalizes the first letter of every word): “I’m not gon’ let this pass and have my publicist write some apology on my behalf like some other artist. I did nothing out of line fuck that.”

When he says “other artists,” he’s probably referring to fellow rapper Rick Ross, whose endorsement deal with Reebok was dropped after he rapped around drugging and raping a woman. Or he could be referring to Lil Wayne, another Mountain Dew partner, who has also been criticized for rapping about having violent sex with a woman and likening it to beating up Emmett Till, the black teenager who was brutally murdered in 1955 by white supremacists who were later acquitted by an all-white jury.

While Tyler, The Creator has said he will not apologize for the commercials, over which he had final approval, he did agree to take the ads off of his YouTube channel.

Mountain Dew—which is arguably one of the last bastions of a food industry that’s allowed to put whatever the hell it wants into its products—is typically marketed to young men, and marketing to young men seems to justify tasteless and offensive ads all the time (hello, Carls Jr.). Now it appears Reebok may actually be rekindling its relationship with Rick Ross following the release of his publicist’s touching apology letter. Awesome sauce. 

The optimistic side of me wants to say that Mountain Dew’s paid apology tweets will serve as a lesson to advertisers and marketing executives who think that the only way to appeal to young men is to resort to racism and sexism. But the realistic side of me sees that Mountain Dew and PepsiCo more or less got what they wanted: a shit ton of attention and a viral commercial that everyone’s talking about.