Animal Crackers Now Free To Roam... Right Into Your Mouth

After more than a century behind bars, Nabisco has freed the titular animals on its packaging of Barnum's Animal Crackers after pressure from the animal rights activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 

PETA, which has been protesting the use of animals in circuses for more than 30 years, wrote a letter to the parent company of Nabisco, Mondelez International, in the spring of 2016 calling for a redesign of the package. 

"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," PETA said in its letter.

The company agreed and began working on a redesign for the packaging of the iconic snack. 

In the meantime, the circus that inspired the crackers - Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey - folded for good after 146-years in business in May 2017. The traveling circus show cited slow ticket sales as the reason for shutting down.

The redesign retains the red and yellow coloring on the box, and now includes illustrations of a zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe, and gorilla strutting side-by-side in a grassland setting. It's a big change from the former box which showed the animals in cages, implying that they're traveling by boxcar for the show's next stop. 

"When PETA reached out about Barnum's, we saw this as another great opportunity to continue to keep this brand modern and contemporary," said Jason Levine, Mondelez's chief marketing officer for North America, in a statement.

The Executive Vice President for PETA, Tracy Reiman, says she's celebrating the box redesign because it reflects a shift in the culture's thinking about caged animals. 

"The new box for Barnum's Animals crackers perfectly reflects that our society no longer tolerates the caging and chaining of wild animals for circus shows," she said.


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