So last week a really, REALLY stupid thing happened online. For some unknown reason, Planters Peanuts decided to kill off their beloved(?) mascot, Mr. Peanut. Here is the incredibly, bafflingly stupid commercial they made.
No one knows the real reason why they decided to pull off the dumbest marketing stunt in history, but I can make a guess. Likes. Retweets. Memes. Words of mouth.
Likes and shares are the currency of the internet. Clicks = money, and they're raking it in.
Their social media person is working overtime responding to all the "Mourners" online. I say mourners, but I know it's just memelords. No one is really upset about this stupid "death" because it's not real. The only people loving this are the people making fun of it.
So I decided to join in. If Planters can straight up murder their mascot, what's stopping other brands from following suit? Why can't McDonalds toss Ronald off a skyscraper? Why can't Fruit Loops gun down Toucan Sam in Wild West style shoot-out? Well they can, and they should.
Originally I started tweeting out all my morbid mascot murder suggestions, but after I'd done like 30, I was like, "I could make a post out of this! I don't blog enough, why not make this into a blog post?" So I saved all my tweets, and then deleted the originals so I could write this instead.
Now, in case you couldn't tell, this post is going to be chock full of dark humor, so if you're not okay with that, then now's your chance to back out safely. I'll have something more wholesome next time. Probably. It's just once in awhile I need to laugh at a death joke. I blame my childhood growing up with Gary Larson's Far Side comics. Now that man could write a hilarious death.
Anyway, these are all really dumb, and I am in no way actually suggesting that brands should start violently killing off their mascots, but I had fun writing this terrible post, so I wanted to share it with the world for some reason.
~~~
My suggestions for Brand Twitter, in case this new "Death Trend" takes off.
How to kill off your beloved mascots.
Cap'n Crunch dies at sea.
The Kool-Aid Man falls off a table and shatters.
The Flintstones are killed in a car crash.
Chester Cheetah is killed by poachers.
The Burger King tries to violently overthrow the Dairy Queen, and is beheaded in battle.
Tony the Tiger dies from steroid abuse.
Chuck-E-Cheese is murdered by his soon-to-be-ex-wife for the insurance money.
Ronald McDonald dies in a random drive-by.
The Vlasic Stork contracts the coronavirus while delivering pickles abroad, and quickly succumbs to the disease.
Wendy dies in Iraq, jumping onto a land mine to save her platoon.
Toucan Sam gets diabetes. He loses a leg first, but they don't catch it in time, and he dies anyway.
Aunt Jemima passes away of old age. Her funeral is lovely. The Quaker Oats guy does a beautiful baritone solo of Amazing Grace.
The Quaker Oats guy disappears under mysterious circumstances. The rumors surrounding his death(?) bloom into a full blown conspiracy theory.
The Pillsbury Doughboy dies in a gang shootout.
Count Chocula gets staked through the heart.
Frankenberry is hunted down by an angry mob, who use their stereotypical torches and pitchforks in ways that the farm supply store would not approve.
The Fruit Brute was caught by a local dog catcher and humanely euthanized.
The Boo-Berry Ghost is already dead. Obviously. So is the Yummy Mummy.
Grimace is tried for murder, and executed via electric chair.
The Honey Nut Cheerios Bee, the bee from Bumblebee Tuna, Sue Bee, and the Jollibee Bee, all die together in yet another case of colony collapse disorder.
Mr. Clean passes away in his sleep from a sudden, unexpected brain aneurysm.
The Nesquik Bunny is killed by my brother with a bow and arrow after getting into his garden.
The Trix Rabbit is killed by my brother with a 22 after getting into his garden.
The Cadbury Bunny is killed by my brother with... You know what? All you rabbit mascots just need to stay out of my brother's garden! It's for your own good!
The Coco Puffs Cuckoo dies of an overdose.
The Honeycomb Crazy Craving is killed by animal control after being mistaken for a rabid opossum.
The Kellogg's Corn Flakes rooster dies from lung cancer after 57 years of being a heavy smoker.
Colonel Sanders is taken out by the Yakuza.
Captain Morgan dies of liver failure.
The Duracell Bunny is found unresponsive in an alley after a legal dispute with the Energizer Bunny.
The Energizer Bunny keeps going and going, until one day, he doesn't.
Geoffry the giraffe is eaten by lions at the watering hole.
The Hardee's Star and his twin brother from Carl's Jr. are both shot down by Donald Trump's new Space Force. They are unfortunately mistaken for spy satellites sent by Malta, who Donald has been suspicious of for quite some time.
The Pringles man dies in his sleep, and the autopsy is inconclusive.
Snap, Crackle, and Pop are all killed in an apparent hate crime, allegedly committed by several of the Keebler Elves. Some of those Keeblers are notoriously racist.
Most of the Keebler elves die after their tree catches fire from a malfunctioning cookie oven. Or arson. Possibly by Lucky the Leprechaun, avenging his cereal brethren.
Lucky the Leprechaun dies at the hands of Ernest J. Keebler himself. Was it a hate crime? Was it revenge? The world may never know, because Ernie dies from injuries sustained in the fight, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
The Green Giant chokes on a carrot and is too big for anyone to successfully perform the Heimlich Maneuver.
The Skinny Cow is just another casualty of the Opioid Epidemic.
The Laughing Cow goes insane and dies in solitary confinement in an understaffed mental hospital.
The Charmin Bears are killed in a plane crash.
That frog and the monkey from those cereals that no one ever buys, die together in a freak accident at Worlds of Fun, when their roller coaster derails and crashes into a nearby food court.
The Pine-Sol lady dies from a carbon monoxide leak.
The Yellow and Red M&Ms contract malaria while vacationing in South Africa.
The Geico Gecko is stepped on by one of the Geico Cavemen.
The Geico Cavemen are hit by an asteroid.
The Geico Pinocchio gets termites.
The California Raisins fall into a geyser in Yellowstone National Park.
Miss Chiquita, the Clabber Girl, the Swiss Miss, and the Sun Maid go on a girls retreat and their boat disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.
Ironically Joe Camel lives a long, mostly healthy life, and only suffers from mild asthma.
The Starbucks Mermaid is caught by Japanese seafood poachers.
The Monopoly Man is murdered by the proletariat.
Twinkie the Kid is mauled by a cougar while camping in Oregon.
The Green M&M melts in a housefire.
Little Debbie is arrested for money laundering and dies in a botched attempt to break out of prison.
Smokey Bear drowns in a lake.
Little Caesar is assassinated.
The Coke Bears decide to try the wrong kind of Coke. Their addiction spirals out of control and in the end, they're just another statistic.
The Aflac Duck... Was delicious...
The Hamburglar is finally caught and tried for his many, many crimes, but is eventually shanked in the prison yard.
Betty Crocker falls off a cliff while hiking in the Rocky Mountains.
The Sprint Guy was taken out in a hit ordered by Verizon, after he betrayed the "family" and switched phone providers.
The Serta Sheep die of exposure after getting caught in a freak blizzard while skiing in Austria.
McGruff the Crime Dog takes a bite out of the wrong criminal. The Godfather is arrested in the back one of his own pizza kitchens, but McGruff's body is found at the bottom of the lake a week later. The police have no real leads at this time.
The Godfather brews up some prison hooch in his toilet. After a wild night in, the guards think he's faking his stomach pains, and he eventually dies of regular old E. Coli.
The brown M&M is carried off by a seagull.
The Travelocity Gnome falls off a skyscraper and shatters on the concrete below. He may have been pushed...
The Old Spice Guy dies of radiation poisoning. The random mutations may have been good for commercial purposes, but they eventually took their toll on his body.
The Michelin Man is visiting relatives in San Francisco, when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake demolishes their neighborhood. His body is never recovered.
Flo from Progressive goes skydiving and her parachute doesn't open.
The Most Interesting Man in the World catches the flu and passes away in a small hospital in western Nebraska.
~~~
So, after I finished writing this, but before I was ready to publish, apparently Planters pulled the plug on the whole campaign. (At least for now) Maybe they realized how dumb it was? Maybe they realized that making inane content for likes and retweets was a stupid marketing tactic? Nope. A real celebrity died and they were afraid people might think they were insensitive.
I don't... I just...
Whatever.
I'm not wasting all the time I spent writing this! It is still going up!
Bye!
