Babies! People absolutely love them. Do you know what they like even better? Cartoon babies. See, for example, Baby Groot. And also see Baby Yoda. Now also add to the pantheon “Baby Nut,” a creation of Planters for the Super Bowl. You’re supposed to hashtag it “baby nut” on your socials, just so you know.
How did we get here? Before the peanut was a baby nut, believe it or not, it was a dead nut. The company killed Mr. Peanut, its 104-year-old mascot, in a pre-Super Bowl spot. The concept was this: Mr. Peanut, a cartoon, and Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes, live-action actors, are driving through what appears to be the Grand Canyon in the Nutmobile. The vehicle swerves off a cliff to avoid hitting an armadillo. The three grab hold of a tree branch on the way down, but the branch is about to break. Mr. Peanut sacrifices himself so the actors can live. (The company briefly paused this ad campaign last week after the tragic deaths of Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other people in a helicopter crash.)
Cut to the Super Bowl spot in second quarter. It’s Mr. Peanut’s funeral. They bury the dead nut, and Kool-Aid Man, who is there too, cries on his grave. A quick sort of biology happens and a baby peanut rises up, a kind of legume Jesus, but with big eyes and a top hat.
Over on Planter’s Mr. Peanut Twitter, a thrifty meme business pumped out aesthetically uniform memes at a quick clip, many of them retweeted from Instagram and Twitter accounts called things like @babynutbaby and @babynutmemes. Planters is, you could say, trying to make “baby nut” happen. Listen, it’s all pretty cynical, but this is the Super Bowl and it’s a commercial. They did everything right. And now we’re saying the words “baby” and “nut” together so I suppose it worked. But at what cost? $5.6 million at least.
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