PR Fail: General Mills Thought It’d Be Cute To Give The Trix Rabbit The COVID Vaccine But It Made His Arms Fall Off

MINNEAPOLIS — Wow. This is a major blunder. General Mills thought it’d be a cute little PR stunt to give the Trix rabbit the COVID-19 vaccine, but within seconds of the injection both his arms fell off. 

“We thought we’d be helping to normalize the vaccine and maybe make a nice ad where the rabbit says ‘we’re all in this together’ after getting the shot,” said General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening, trying to hold back tears “but now we’ve got a traumatized mascot with no arms and we may have irreparably harmed this country’s vaccine effort. I’m so screwed!”

The CDC is investigating the incident but believes it may have occurred due to either an adverse reaction with the rabbit’s animated DNA or as a result of him having never eaten a balanced breakfast in his entire life.

“The worst part was that we had all the cartoon kids there to watch the rabbit get the vaccine but when his arms fell off, they thought we planned it and they hate the rabbit, so they started clapping and cheering like ‘silly rabbit- vaccines are for kids!’ and ‘you deserve this you dirty cereal thief!’” said Chief Marketing Officer Ivan Pollard, “it was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno”.

General Mills apparently intended to give all of their mascots the shot immediately after the Trix rabbit but the plan was scrapped when things went wrong.

“We were in the middle of giving the shot to Count Chocula when the Trix rabbit’s arms started turning purple and horrible pus-filled boils formed,” said a General Mills employee who chose to remain anonymous, “so I had to quickly suck the vaccine out of Count Chocula’s arm like it was a rattlesnake bite”.

How General Mills hopes to spin this tragedy remains to be seen. 

“We’ll either give him some robot arms and say he lost his original ones in a hiking accident,” said Pollard, “or graft some dead guy’s arms on him like we did with Franken Berry and have him wear a cool leather jacket all the time”.