Twitter users were tasting a rainbow of outrage on Tuesday, as they rushed to condemn or defend Donald Trump Jr. for comparing Syrian refugees to a bowl with poisoned Skittles.

The son of the Republican presidential candidate tweeted an image Monday night showing a bowl full of multi-coloured Skittles, with the caption: "If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem."

The comment comes during a presidential campaign in which the elder Trump has proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S., building a wall along the border with Mexico and forcing an ideological test on immigrants to the country. His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, has said she would expand the current immigration policy accept an additional 65,000 refugees into the United States.

Skittles was quick to distance itself from Donald Trump Jr.'s analogy in a statement issued early Tuesday. "Skittles are candy. Refugees are people," said Denise Young, VP of Corporate Affairs for Skittles' parent company, Wrigley America. "We don't feel it's an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing."

Many critics responded to Trump Jr. by tweeting images of suffering Syrian refugees, accompanied by the caption "Skittle," to suggest that the children were nothing more than candies in Trump's eyes. Others simply condemned Trump's argument as flawed.

One user even reworked the image to mock the Trump campaign. "If I had a bowl of skittles and the orange one said we should fear the other colours, would you vote for him?" wrote user Gabe Ortiz.

But while many leapt to attack Trump, others rushed to his defence, condemning those who took issue with the tweet as too "leftist" or liberal.

New spin on an old meme

The "deadly bowl of candy" meme has been around for a few years, although older versions used M&Ms instead of Skittles to condemn black people, police and refugees. In 2014, a popular feminist version surfaced that referred to men as M&Ms. "You say not all men are monsters?" the image said. "Imagine a bowl of M&Ms. 10 per cent of them are poisoned. Go ahead. Eat a handful. Not all M&Ms are poison."

A few Twitter users compared the Trump tweet to the feminist M&M version of the meme, asking what makes them different.