Last month, Target announced that it would reduce the number of items in its annual Pride collection. Along with the news that it would be scaling back its Pride-related merchandise, it also announced that Pride merch would only be available in select stores "based on historical sales performance" and online. The move comes after the retailer faced backlash from far-right conservatives last year.
While it might have been a more scaled-back collection, it still featured lots of the usual rainbow-themed clothing and accessories that Target's Pride collection is known for.
However, there were two standouts from the collection that have become unexpected hits: Movie Star Featherly Bird Friend and Beach Poolside Featherly Bird Friend. The Pride (?) birds, which are part of a line of dressed-up birds that Target puts out seasonally, also come with a car and cabana accessory (sold separately, of course). Needless to say, the feathered duo are completely sold out online and extremely hard to find in stores.
The Pride birds have also gone viral everywhere, from Instagram and TikTok to Twitter/X. Below are some tweets that perfectly sum up how much people are obsessed with them:
1.
kinda homophobic that my roommate doesnβt want to drive 90 minutes with me to go to the only Target that has this stupid bird in stock pic.twitter.com/a5bmtXbKqI
Included in Target's Pride collection, for reasons no one has yet explained to me, is a bird version of Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven pic.twitter.com/qCbbGrYj1Q
To all the folks just discovering the pride target birds Iβm so sorry to tell you that they will never be available online, the bird Facebook communities are VICIOUS about getting the birds at 3 am the day they drop
This year's Target Pride collection looks like it was created by three cishet people who put it together at 4:55pm on a Friday, but it does have one (1) thing going for it: this 1950s-styled "movie star" bird.