Twitter has forced Cheerios maker General Mills to delete a tweet tribute to the late musician Prince. The singer's angry fans took to social media to slam the breakfast cereal 's Twitter post. 57-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson died on April 21, Thursday after suffering flu-like symptoms for several weeks.
Prince was found unresponsive inside an elevator at his Minnesota studios. The pop singer's death shocked his fans.
Cheerios retweeted a "Rest in peace" sign. It included a purple background and a whole grain cheerio instead of a dot over the letter "i." The hashtag was #prince.
Fans quickly made a series of angry comments, which forced the company to pull the Twitter post. The responses included commenters who argued it was opportunistic marketing too soon after the musician's death, while others said that Cheerios should have apologized after deleting the tweet.
One tweet used satire to mock Cheerios' tribute. It said that love for the late singer and sadness after his death were transferred to love for the round cereal.
Minnesota-based General Mills stated that it wanted to remember the loss of a musical legend in the company's hometown, according to CNN. However it e-mailed a statement to CNNMoney sharing that it did not want to anger Prince's mourning fans so it removed the tweet.
Cheerios is not the first company to deal with angry social media responses. In 2014 Best Buy apologized for a tweet that seemed to suggest a real 15-year-old murder case was not serious, according to Fortune.
Meanwhile, last week fast food chain KFC got in trouble for promoting something "hot and spicy" that showed a sexually suggestive image of a couple sitting on a couch. The company apologized for using bad judgment.
Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson has also posted a controversial Prince tribute on social media. The photo-shopped picture is a mock-up of Prince's second album that substitutes the boxer's face.
Tyson posted the meme on Instagram and mentioned in the caption the goal of the post was to celebrate Prince's music. He noted on Facebook's social network that the image was a tribute to the musician's genius, and he wanted to re-share the photo after it went viral.
Here's a Prince tribute: