Fruity Take on CMU Housing
Back when Welch's was just a grape juice company, Andrew Carnegie was their biggest fan. In fact, in 1905, he built the beloved Welch House in the company's honor (and for a very generous donation) similarly to the Giant Eagle Auditorium or the Trojan Center for the Performing Arts.
Unfortunately, despite Welch House's small capacity, Carnegie's small trade school of white men did not have enough people to fill the dorm. After years of Welch House sitting empty, the 1969 CMU president H. Cortland Matthews decided to get creative.
In the golden age of communism and good guitar players, Matthews collaborated with Welch's CEO, Phineas Welch, to come up with a marketing scheme that would benefit both parties: the Fruit Snack.
And how to sell fruit snacks? Why, with gay people, of course. With their innovative "A fruit snack for a fruit snack" campaign, Welch managed to invent gay people as a brand new concept and spread it all over the world. Simultaneously, CMU's Welch House opened itself up to inclusive housing and managed to fill up within a few years.
Soon, everyone was gay, and everyone was snacking, and the world held hands and sang kumbaya. At least, until straight people were invented a while later… yikes, right?