IHOP's Pancakes-In-A-Uterus Tweet Somehow Not Well Received

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By  Kate Bernot

Mother's Day is one of the biggest brunch holidays of the years, so I'd imagine it turns up the pressure on IHOP's marketing team. As a writer whose job it is to come up with new, fun, fresh-off-the-griddle content every day, I sympathize a bit. Some days, the creative well feels like it's running dry. All of this is to cushion the blow of what I'm about to say: One of IHOP's Mother's Day tweets fell oh-so-flat on its face, like a syruped pancake splatting on a kitchen floor. Here is that tweet, which involves a uterus:

When I saw this tweet and the subsequent backlash yesterday, I took a screenshot, fearful that IHOP would delete it. But no, here it still stands in all its digital glory, a full day later. Most of the responses to this tweet are straight fire, so please scroll through them for yourself. But if you're pressed for time, allow me to organize the backlash into handy categories:

  • First and foremost: A person was paid to create the ad copy: "Pancakes in the tum tum."
  • That is an ultrasound, which would presumably be of a uterus, not a stomach. Someone needs to have The Talk with IHOP.
  • Given last week's intense national debate over Alabama and Georgia's abortion laws, maybe it wasn't the time to make pregnancy jokes to sell pancakes.
  • There have been recent efforts to expand Mother's Day appreciation to people who mother (verb) in ways other than biologically giving birth to children. There are single dads who mother; adoptive mothers who mother; stepmothers who mother; etc., etc. Reducing motherhood to the physical act of giving birth not only excludes many of those people, but could be especially painful for people who have had difficulty conceiving children.

    • All of this is to say: Not a great tweet, IHOP. Tim Hortons you are not.

    In summation:

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