home equity line of credit loans: Pepsi posted "Wild Cherry stops asking permission." Was that joke uncalled for?

Pepsi posted "Wild Cherry stops asking permission." Was that joke uncalled for?

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7/15/26 | Issue #124

PEPSI'S "WILD CHERRY" CONSENT POST: OFFENSIVE OR OVERBLOWN?

On July 6, Pepsi posted on Threads: "Pepsi Wild Cherry is what happens when regular cherry stops asking permission." Within hours, the post was being called a sexual assault joke and proof that corporate marketing has lost its mind. Pepsi deleted it and apologized within 24 hours. "Our recent Wild Cherry post landed in a way we never intended. We hear you, we're sorry."

The intended meaning — that Wild Cherry is bolder and less restrained than regular cherry — was immediately buried under a wave of responses calling it "sickening," "shameful," and "promoting rape culture." Others pushed back just as hard, saying the reading was absurd and that critics had attached a sexual meaning that was never there. "I read permission as a hell-raising kind of kid," one person wrote. "Not an assault."

A wordplay joke about a soda. A national conversation about consent. You decide which one this actually was.

Where Do You Stand?

It Was Offensive

People Are Too Sensitive

Pick Your Side

POSITION A: It Was Offensive

A major corporation wrote "stops asking permission" in a world where one in six women has been assaulted, had it up for ten hours, and only pulled it when the backlash was too loud to ignore. Whether it was intentional or not, a brand with a full marketing team approved language that reads like a consent violation.

POSITION B: People Are Too Sensitive

It was a joke about a soda being bold and unapologetic — the same angle used by every energy drink, hot sauce, and "extreme" product in marketing history. Interpreting "Wild Cherry stops asking permission" as a SA reference requires deciding in advance that everything is a threat. Pepsi shouldn't have apologized. They should have stood behind a harmless pun.