Cheerios ad featuring interracial family sparks backlash

A new television ad that features an interracial family having some fun with the popular Cheerios cereal brand has sparked an onslaught of racist comments online.

A new television commercial that features an interracial family having some fun with the popular Cheerios cereal brand has sparked an onslaught of racist comments online.

The 30-second TV advert, which debuted in the U.S. last week and was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, shows a young biracial girl asking her mother if the popular breakfast cereal is "good for your heart."

Her white mother, sitting in the kitchen, answers yes. The little girl then runs away, clutching the yellow cereal box. Next, the ad cuts to the girl's napping father, who is black, before he awakes on the couch with a pile of the cereal on his chest.

The "Just Checking" ad closes with the world "Love" on the screen.

But since the ad first aired, its message touting the cereal’s health benefits has been shadowed by thousands of hateful comments online.

On YouTube, where the spot had registered close to 900,000 views on YouTube by Saturday afternoon, comments have now been disabled.

According to Adweek, the shut down came after a slew of commenters made references to Nazis, "troglodytes" and "racial genocide" in their messages about the video.

On Reddit, a social news website where users can upload content, a string of racist messages were also posted. "Should be for multi-grain cheerios" said one commentator. "Why are we celebrating race traitors and ugly monkey children?" posted another.

But despite the racial backlash, General Mills said they are standing by their ad. "At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all," Camille Gibson, the cereal brand’s vice president of marketing told Gawker in a statement.

General Mills said they are not considering pulling the ad, pointing to the fact that many consumers have also responded positively to the television spot.

On YouTube's approval counter which registers the number of likes and dislikes, there were 11,924 "thumbs up" as of Saturday afternoon, compared with 1,005 "thumbs down."

A number of Reddit readers have also posted positive comments, saying they thought the ad was "cute." And on the General Mills Cheerios Facebook page, over 2,200 people gave the ad a "thumbs up."

"Kudos to you for keeping it real!!," posted one Facebook user.

The ad was created by New York ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi.