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Mr. Peanut gets roasted in death with nutty memes and jokes

The Planters mascot is getting a Super Bowl funeral, but many on Twitter think he's now honey-roasting in Hell.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read

Rest in pieces, Mr. Peanut. Salty, crunchy, delicious pieces. On Wednesday, Planters nuts revealed an ad that will run before Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2 in which the company's monocled mascot, Mr. Peanut, apparently sacrifices his life for actors Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh. 

In an email, a Planters spokesperson said that an ad featuring Mr. Peanut's funeral will air during the game's third quarter. So yeah, they're going all in on this peanut death -- kind of like Bud Light during last year's Super Bowl, when the beer brand had the Mountain from Game of Thrones kill off the Bud Knight mascot.

The nuttiness of the impending mascot death made social-media users a little salty.

Some started thinking about the unnerving fact that an anthropomorphic peanut had spent years encouraging humans to eat others of his kind.

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"Mr. Peanut is in Hell," tweeted comedian and writer Patrick Monahan. "He spent decades as the smiling face of a company that sold the boiled and roasted corpses of his people as a snack."

Mr. Peanut's apparent death started some people musing on other food mascots that encourage humans to eat their own kind. "Who will now assume his mantle of Great Betrayer?" wrote one Twitter user. "All of his other peers were vanquished, most by his very hand."

The Mr. Peanut official Twitter account changed its name to The estate of Mr. Peanut, noting that the salty dude was born in 1916, so lived to a ripe old 104.

But some were quick to question the details of the "death." Said one Twitter user, "I would say he was driving a little fast for a 104-year-old anything."

And others were planning the after-death details. 

"We should honor his legacy by giving him a proper roast," wrote one Twitter user. "He would have wanted that."

Things got truly weird when other brands got involved. Tootsie Roll's Mr. Owl mascot posted a rather menacing tweet, saying, "We thought about it, but we swear we didn't do it."

Not everyone was mourning the once-perky peanut. And not everyone is convinced he's gone for good. "If this is a scam and they bring Mr Peanut back from the dead I'm never eating a peanut again," wrote one Twitter user.

And some are focused on the very-human, behind-the-scenes details of a company creating an ad campaign around the violent death of its supposedly beloved icon.

But will the company really kill off a century-plus-old mascot and keep him dead? Plus,, wouldn't a peanut falling into an exploding car just end up better-tasting? Looks like Planters' nutty idea is to get people to tune in to its funeral ad and find out.