Super Bowl 2020: Mr. Peanut’s Death Riles up Social Media

In one of the strangest marketing stunts of the year, Planters Peanuts announced on Monday that its iconic mascot, Mr. Peanut, has died. The news is likely a lead-up to the brand’s Super Bowl commercial next month, but social media is already having a field day with it. In no time at all, Mr. Peanut’s death was trending on Twitter.

“It is with heavy hearts that we confirm that Mr. Peanut has died at 104,” read a post from Mr. Peanut’s official Twitter account on Wednesday. “In the ultimate selfless act, he sacrificed himself to save his friends when they needed him most. Please pay your respects with #RIPeanut.”

The backstory here is unclear, but it obviously runs deep. The tweet included a new logo of a monocle with a tear drop, which read “In memory of Mr. Peanut, 1916-2020.” The account also changed its profile picture and its display name, which now reads: “The Estate of Mr. Peanut.”

Naturally, this stunt took over Twitter for a time, for better or for worse. Many users got in on the jokes, or tried to give them an ironic twist. Others were simply incredulous at the latest effort to personify a brand for the sake of viral marketing.

Whatever the response, just about everyone on Twitter seemed to have a take. Here is what social media is saying about the death of Mr. Peanut.

Bad Year

Celebrity deaths are often tied to the year they occurred, helping to characterize that year as bad overall. Some users tried to apply that method of scrutiny to 2020 early on through the death of Mr. Peanut, though others looked at it from a more detached perspective, wondering if the marketing team at Planters had foreseen it.

Cremate

Naturally there were plenty of jokes about Mr. Peanut floating around on Wednesday, particularly from salty snack lovers. Many users wondered what would happen to Mr. Peanut’s body, and whether it would become more delicious.

‘Too Far’

Some users were more alarmed than amused by this trending topic, seeing it as a ghoulish escalation of growing trend. There are plenty of Twitter users who resent the way brands present themselves as relatable on social media, and they were not into the idea that they could die now as well.

Problematic

Planters probably hoped that people would get in on the joke and play along, but they may not have liked where some folks took it. The expanding, memetic fiction of Mr. Planters’ life and the world he lived in got dark incredibly fast, with many people asserting problematic stories about him as if they were truth. With no central authorial source to rely on, these could all be taken as canon.

Conspiracy

Presuming that Mr. Peanut would be revived somehow in Planters’ Super Bowl ad, many people got to work theorizing, either about how the mascot was still alive or would be brought back from the dead. Some even drew grisly associations between this and other popular conspiracy theory cases, such as that of Jeffrey Epstein.

Peanut Universe

Given the slight provocation, many people began spinning out yarns of fiction about the peanut society Mr. Peanut comes from. Assuming he is not the only one of his kind, users speculated about what kind of role he might occupy in his world, and who he might be compared to.

Real News

Finally, there were plenty of people who were disgusted to see Mr. Peanut trending on Wednesday with everything else going on in the world. The impeachment hearings for President Donald Trump officially got underway that morning, and some resented Planters for trying to overshadow that news. They resented Twitter at large for indulging them, too.

Super Bowl LIV airs live on Sunday, Feb. 2 on Fox.