14 Cynical Corporate Pride Stunts for the Hall of Shame
We all loved to dunk on “corporate pride,” but we’re getting nostalgic for gratuitous rainbow logos now that we have advanced compliance to a fascist regime.
Postmates
The food delivery app put together a “bottom-friendly menu” of meals that are good if you’re going to get railed in the back door. For example, white rice and fish makes the list because it “digests easily and slowly while feeding your good gut bacteria.”
Skittles
They wanted to get in on the performative , but how do you heighten your performance when your slogan is already “Taste the Rainbow”? In 2020, they removed the color entirely, selling sickly beige Skittles with the tag line, “Only one rainbow matters during pride.”
Oreo
Their 2020 Pride commercial showed an evidently conservative father being forced to meet his daughter’s girlfriend, and eventually deciding to paint a sloppy rainbow on his fence to make up for a long weekend of stony silence.
Axe
Technically “Lynx” in the U.K., they added a big rainbow to the packaging of their product “for everyone who wants to find their magic, regardless of gender.” Unfortunately, the product is still purchased almost exclusively by young straight men with no taste and even less game.
Listerine
Listerine released a rainbow bottle for Pride 2019, complete with the words associated with each color. But they made a few crucial missteps: They got turquoise and indigo wrong, and left out pink entirely. The latter was probably no accident, as hot pink usually represents sexuality.
Vaseline
Vaseline’s gay lip balm cost almost twice what their regular stuff did in 2022, with a rainbow-colored container selling for $1.95 versus the regular $.98. People were quick to point out that this product would actually compromise the integrity of a condom if it were to somehow come in .
Burger King
In 2022, Whopper shoppers could order the Pride Whopper, which let them select “two equal buns” — either two tops or two bottoms.
Bud Light
Two years before they’d hire Dylan Mulvaney (and then throw her to the wolves), Bud Light dropped an ad that featured a rainbow beer bottle and an adorable acrostic poem: “Let’s Grab Beer Tonight Queens.”
Apple
Apple is notoriously stingy with the color arrays they allow their products to be sold in, but in 2023 they graciously allowed fans to buy a few different colors to (wordlessly) represent pride in one’s sexuality or (wordlessly) spread awareness of HIV and AIDS. They didn’t donate proceeds to charity or anything, they just let customers have access to color.
American Apparel
This was a valiant effort to stand up to the new Trump istration in 2017, who had just banned certain “controversial” words from the CDC’s website. Yet to anyone but the most chronically online, their Pride shirt looked like one of those “In This House We…” signs had a live-laugh-lovechild with a thesaurus: “Diversity. Transgender. Evidence-Based. Science-Based. Fetus. Entitlement. Vulnerable.”
M&S
The British grocery store offered an LGBT sandwich in 2019: a lettuce, guac, bacon and tomato sandwich in a rainbow box.
Pret a Manger
The official overpriced bodega of Midtown Manhattan didn’t bother to chuck a rainbow on their dry sandwiches in 2022, and instead started a Spotify playlist of gay anthems called “Pride a Manger.”
The U.S. Marine Corp
To kick off Pride Month 2025, the U.S. Marines were called in to reinforce the violent quelling of anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Three years earlier, they were posting a digital camo helmet with rainbow-tipped bullets strapped to it.
Axon
This taser and tactical drone manufacturing company took time away from their busy schedule of fuelling the military-industrial complex to design a rainbow social media header that read, “PROTECT LOVE.”
