Cheerios commercial with mixed family gets racist backlash on YouTube

Cheerios debuted a new advertisement on YouTube Tuesday, featuring a daughter who hopes to promote her dad's good heart health by, well, applying directly to his chest.

But the sweetly funny ad didn't get just smiles: It got a whole bunch of nasty comments, simply because the family depicted in the video is biracial -- the mom is white, the dad is black.

The comments on YouTube, where the chatter has been known to be particularly nasty anyway, got so bad Cheerios had to close the video's comments section.

According to Adweek, the comments included references to "troglodytes," Nazis and "racial genocide."

For its part, Cheerios seemed unfazed.

"Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad," Camille Gibson, vice president of marketing, told Gawker. "At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all."

A glance at Cheerios' Facebook page, where comments are still open, seems to reflect not just approval of the ad, but real appreciation from people whose families look like the one in the ad.