A tweet from the University of Toledo's verified account was taken down Tuesday afternoon after the tweet, which promised to change the school's mascot to Shrek if there were 500,000 retweets, started gaining serious traction.
It appears as though the University Of Toledo has deleted its promise to change its mascot to Shrek if it got 500K retweets. Was getting roughly 1,000 retweets a minute towards the end. pic.twitter.com/fqrQPUItkv
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 24, 2018
"The tweet was meant to be fun, but it caused too much of a distraction," school spokesperson Christine Billau said in an email to ESPN.
The tweet was up for more than three hours and had accumulated nearly 91,000 retweets. As more and more publications and handles picked up the tweet, the number of retweets gained momentum.
At the time the post was taken down, the tweet was averaging roughly 1,000 retweets per minute.
It was doubtful that even 500,000 retweets would result in a change of Toledo's mascot. DreamWorks Animation owns 12 trademarks to the cartoon ogre, which has generated more than $5 billion in revenue for the company.
Rocky the Rocket has been the mascot of the school's sports teams since 1966, last receiving an updated costume in 2008.