A video authentically showed a Target ad featuring a costume that critics said evoked racist blackface and minstrel imagery.
In August 2026, after the retailer Target removed a costume from its website that faced backlash for evoking racist minstrel and blackface imagery, a video circulated online that social media users claimed (archived) showed an ad that Target also pulled featuring the costume in question.
The video showed an animated character wearing the since-removed costume advertising various $5 fall deals.
One Threads user who shared the video wrote, “Target pulls national ad campaign after accusations that new spokesperson is ‘racist.'” “Spokesperson” appeared to refer to the character in the video.
The alleged ad also circulated on Facebook (archived) and X (archived), where community notes identified it as a product of artificial intelligence.
The video was fake. It came from an X account that described its content as “probably AI” and marked (archived) the video itself “Made with AI” on its timeline.
Aside from the creator’s own admission that they used AI to create the video, it also contained obvious signs of fakery. There were multiple instances of incorrect or unreadable text throughout the video, a classic sign of the use of AI.
For example, at 0:01, on-screen text read “HEYY TURGET FANS.” It was unlikely Target would misspell its own name in public advertising. At 0:02, the costumed character held a candle that contained misshapen letters in the word “Pumpkin.” At 0:05, three products appeared on screen, one of which featured totally unreadable text.
(@JasonRink, accessed via X, illustrated by Snopes)
The widely criticized costume itself was real. Target announced (archived) on Aug. 24, 2026, that it had “pulled an offensive Halloween costume that should never have been part of our assortment.”
The retailer’s statement continued:
As a company, we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry. We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners. Removing the costume is an important first step, and the company is looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won’t happen again.
Critics of the costume said it evoked racist minstrel and blackface imagery. Blackface minstrelsy — performances where white performers artificially darkened their faces and depicted Black people as “lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice,” according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture — are widely considered racist today.
Social media users criticized aspects of the costume such as its large, caricatured mouth and the model’s pose, which was similar to images of Jim Crow, a blackface minstrelsy character whose name later became associated with racial segregation laws in the U.S.
For further reading, Snopes routinely investigates AI-generated content.
