If you’ve been staying away from Nabisco’s Barnum’s Animal Crackers because eating them while caged animals look disapprovingly at you just don’t jibe with your whole humanistic and compassionate vibe, you’re in luck! Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco has redesigned the packaging for the iconic snacks after receiving a letter from PETA urging them to release the cartoon animals from their 2D prisons. We like the change, but still dislike the fact that Nabisco continues to refer to them as crackers, I mean what the hell?
This is a cracker.
PETA wrote the letter in spring 2016 according to AP, explaining to Mondelez “Given the egregious cruelty inherent in circuses that use animals and the public’s swelling opposition to the exploitation of animals used for entertainment, we urge Nabisco to update its packaging in order to show animals who are free to roam in their natural habitats.” The redesigned packaging shows a gorilla, giraffe, lion, elephant, and zebra roaming free through the Serengeti, it’s a lot more inviting than the original box logo and way less depressing (though only potentially accurate in Uganda and even then gorillas wouldn’t go out on the plains like that).
Barnum’s Animals is the only brand of animal crackers to have caged animals as part of their artwork, which is weird but makes sense, because of their connections to Barnum and Bailey Circus who shut their doors — or tent curtains rather — last May because of dwindling attendance. Probably because circuses are weird and sad.
Here are the boxes side by side, notice the grieving animal parents saying their last goodbyes before their children are ripped from them and forced to tight-rope walk and jump through flaming hoops or whatever it is that goes on at the circus.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmwtDcXnmkz/?tagged=animalcrackers
