Wednesday, May. 19, 2021
Did Kit Kat release a diagonally cut, ‘not straight’ candy bar to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month?
The manufacturers of Kit Kat candy bars (the Hershey Company in the U.S. and Nestlé around the world) told Lead Stories they have no record of such a product.
A social media post that appeared in 2020 and reappeared in May 2021 with a photo showing diagonal lines on a chocolate bar carried text saying the candy was produced for Pride Month with "no straight lines."
A spokesperson for Hershey said, "This product is not something that we launched or is available in the U.S." A spokesperson for Nestlé S.A. said he could find no record of such a product on his company's site.
The post also claimed Hershey invented chocolate. Chocolate has been consumed for thousands of years. Creation of the first mass-produced chocolate bar is attributed to Joseph Fry, in 1847.
And diagonal lines are in fact straight lines.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- Library of Congress Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride Month
- Smithsonian A Brief History of Chocolate
- Bristol City Council Museum Collections
- Vocabulary.com Definition of 'diagonal'
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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