By Monday night, Skittles was trending with more than
30,000 mentions. Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet had thousands of
likes and retweets.
Hours
later, Denise Young, VP-corporate affairs at at Skittles parent
Wrigley Americas, issued this statement:
Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. 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.
Tuesday morning, the hashtag #SkittlesWelcome was
trending in the United States on Twitter.
While Donald Trump Jr. was the one whose tweet got the
buzz, former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh pointed out that he had
made the same connection back in August, albeit without a picture
of a white bowl filled with the colorful candy.
Skittles didn't seem eager to draw more
attention than necessary to its unwilling enlistment in the
campaign. Its consumer-facing brand page didn't refer to the issue
on Tuesday morning. Those who checked the brand's Twitter feed,
meanwhile, would have remained unaware of any politicially-charged
social media issues. The tweet posted on Skittles Twitter feed Monday was
a joke about Talk Like A Pirate Day.