Baby Nut and Peanut Jr.
On January 22, 2020, Planters released a teaser for its Super Bowl LIV commercial featuring Mr. Peanut, Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh. The trio was shown hanging onto a branch after accidentally driving the Nutmobile off a cliff to avoid an armadillo with Mr. Peanut electing to let go and fall to his death onto the Nutmobile, which then explodes. The company's social media outlets stated that his funeral would be the subject of Planters' Super Bowl ad.[19][20][21]
Planters suspended the campaign shortly after the Calabasas helicopter crash on January 26, which killed all passengers including former NBA player Kobe Bryant. It eventually resumed the campaign with the Super Bowl commercial, which showed Snipes and Walsh presiding over the funeral of Mr. Peanut, also attended by fellow mascots Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean. Kool-Aid Man's tears combined with sunlight, causing a new, younger incarnation of Mr. Peanut, dubbed "Baby Nut", to grow from the soil. After brief baby sounds, Baby Nut quotes "Just kidding, I'm back". Everyone celebrates Mr. Peanut's revival as he asks "Where's my monocle"?[22]
After the premiere of the commercial, the Planters Twitter account was used to make posts in character as Baby Nut. It also retweeted posts from several Baby Nut meme accounts created before the ad aired, prompting Twitter to suspend them under the presumption that they were created by the company's agency to manipulate the platform in violation of its terms of use.[23]
The campaign faced a mixed reaction from viewers, while comparisons were drawn between the character and other juvenile incarnations of characters seen in media, such as Grogu and Groot.[24][25] Explaining the intent of the campaign, a spokesman for Planters' advertising agency cited the examples of superhero deaths in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for how such a death could connect with viewers and potential customers.[26]
In August 2020, a continuation of the campaign launched, where Baby Nut is revealed to have aged into a 21-year-old young adult, "Peanut Jr."[27] This decision resulted in much more volatile reactions than Baby Nut's campaign, with a tweet encouraging others to block Peanut Jr.'s account becoming viral.[28]
A Nut Above, 2021 refresh
The Baby Nut campaign ended in February 2021, with Mr. Peanut returning to adulthood; Planters announced it would not "spend $5 million dropping [the character] off a cliff"; the company introduced a new campaign, "A Nut Above", and announced that it would highlight people "who made the world a little less nutty" in 2020.[29] In preparation for the sale of Planters by Kraft to Hormel, Planters relaunched the Mr. Peanut character in May 2021 with new commercials depicting a two-dimensional, animated version of the mascot, and focusing on the nutritional qualities of its products.[30]
