Most brands sat out 9/11 this year, but VeggieTales and Smash Mouth never forget

One of the core tenets of social media marketing is that your #brand should be relevant, responding to the events of the day in a manner that will feel authentic and relatable. After all, as Citizens United proved, a corporation isn’t a soulless organization engineered exclusively to acquire capital for its owners—it’s a person with feelings and political leanings. And one thing those corporations have all agreed on over the years is that we should never forget 9/11, or brands.

Who can forget the brave corporations who refused to let the day pass without commemorating it by offering a shitty discount or an uproarious pun based on the unspeakable tragedy? Over the years, it’s become something of a parlor game to see which corporate Twitter account will heroically co-opt the hashtag in an attempt to increase their brand awareness while simultaneously commemorating the thousands of American lives lost that day, as well as the ongoing tragedy of the foreign policy the attack spurred our government to undertake. And while things remained relatively quiet in 2017, two brave brands refused to be silenced.

Yes, that’s ’90s alt-rock meme Smash Mouth and computer-animated Christian cartoon VeggieTales firing off custom-made images that align their logos with the imagery of 9/11. It’s possible that Smash Mouth did this sarcastically, playing to their 9/11-loving r/dankmemes base, although they did at least delete the tweet afterward. VeggieTales, though, has left the tweet to sing the memory of that fateful day with the grinning faces of Bob The Tomato and Larry The Cucumber—two true patriots who refuse to forget.