Pringles finally acknowledged fans’ longstanding complaints about its product for this year’s Super Bowl ad. The commercial starts with a young man getting his hand stuck in a Pringles can when he reaches for the last few chips at the bottom, then follows the rest of his life with the can in place. Sadly, the ad does not offer a solution or an alternative.
Pringles bought a staggering 90 seconds of airtime to get its “Stuck on You” ad placed among this year’s Super Bowl commercials. It plays on the age-old complaint that the distinct cans Pringles chips are sold in are too narrow and that customers must either make a mess by tipping the can to get to the chips or risk getting their hand stuck. However, this commercial seems to romanticize the stuck process as a young man finds love, has a family and grows old without seeming to mind the can.
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Like many other companies, Pringles ramped up to this ad for weeks ahead of time. In an accompanying video, it revealed that about 43 percent of customers have admitted to getting their hands stuck in a Pringles can. Some have begged the company to redesign the cans for easier access, but there’s no sign of that coming anytime soon.
The response to this commercial was generally positive, with some viewers giving Pringles props for making an entertaining commercial without an A-list celebrity cameo. However, some also criticized the brand for belatedly borrowing a joke that social media has been making for ages. Others referenced Bo Burnham’s song “Can’t Handle This,” the closer from his 2016 special Make Happy.
Burnham closed that special with a parody of Kanye West – another timely comparison – by improvising over a dramatic beat with heavy voice modulation. In mockery of West’s mundane complaints, he dedicated several verses to complaining about the diameter of Pringles cans. Burnham called on the company to resize the cans, and fans have been campaigning for that change ever since.
This year’s Super Bowl commercials were some of the biggest and most expensive of all time, and some of them seem to have paid off judging by the chatter on social media. Whether Pringles has enticed fans to “get stuck in” remains to be seen.
