Lessons from 110-year-old peanut mascots.
A Friday newsletter that rarely wears a top hat or monocle.
The year is 1916.
A 13 or 14-year-old named Antonio Gentile submitted a drawing of a jovial peanut to a Planters design contest.
He won $5. Not a bad haul for 1916.
An artist named Andrew Wallach or a Planters employee named Frank Krize Sr. would add the monocle, top hat and cane.
Mascot origin stories are as complicated as cocktail origins.
Mr. P. Nut would go on to be one of the most recognizable advertising mascots of all time.
His real name is Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe. Of course it is.
Today we just call him, Mr. Peanut.
LONG MAY HE REIGN
By the 1930s Mr. Peanut was everywhere.
Planters would open hundreds of stores.
A legendary store on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk had fans carrying 5-cent bags of nuts everywhere called "The Nickel Lunch." They were walking billboards.
There were print ads.
TV ads.
Incredible Times Square billboards.
Mr. Peanut showed up at political conventions. Thanksgiving parades. Wherever he was needed.
There was the Nutmobile in 1935.
He was inducted in the Advertising Walk of Fame in 2004.
In 2006 the public was asked if Mr. Peanut still needed a bow tie, cufflinks or pocketwatch?
The public voted for no changes. See, sometimes democracy works.
Robert Downey Jr. would become the first voice of Mr. Peanut in 2010.
In 2017, the Virginia General Assembly voted on a joint resolution commending him.
THEN AN AD AGENCY HAD HIM JUMP OFF A CLIFF.
In a pre-Super Bowl teaser in January 2020, Planters showed Mr. Peanut sacrificing himself to save Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh during a Nutmobile crash to avoid hitting an armadillo - at least that’s what they want you to think.
Only an ad agency would set out to kill the brands own 104-year-old mascot.
The agency was VaynerMedia. I can only imagine what that presentation was like.
The creative team cited Iron Man, Marvel deaths and maybe even Jon Snow storylines as inspiration.
Then timing got ugly.
Planters suspended the campaign after a Calabasas helicopter crash killed Kobe Bryant.
The Super Bowl ad showed Mr. Peanut's funeral, attended by Mr. Clean and the Kool-Aid Man.
I kid you not, the Kool-Aid Man's tears then caused a sprout to grow from the grave.
And Baby Nut was born.
Within a year, Planters reverted back to classic Mr. Peanut.
Kraft sold Planters to Hormel in 2021.
THE AD LESSON
Mr. Peanut outlived every trend, every owner and every agency idea for over a century.
World wars. The Great Depression. Television. Digital. Social Media.
Only to be murdered by his own brand on national television. Et tu, VaynerMedia?
The lesson: don't kill what's working just because your agency is bored with it.
Planters spent $5 million on a Super Bowl spot only to destroy a 104-year-old asset.
Sometimes the most rebellious thing a brand can do is leave the mascot the hell alone.
THE COCKTAIL: THE AVIATION
This week’s cocktail originated the same year as Mr. Peanut. In 1916 Hugo Ensslin, the head bartender at New York’s Hotel Wallick made a drink for the booming field of aviation that captured everyone’s attention.
Airline travel was the AI of its time. Hugo used the very exotic sounding crème de violette to create that pale sky-blue colour. Here is the recipe in Hugo’s cocktail book. Think of it like a lavender gin sour.
Give this a try:
2 oz gin
0.5 oz lemon juice
2 tsp maraschino liqueur
2 tsp crème de violette
Shake with ice, strain into a coupe. No garnish.
I’m going to be straight up with you. Buying a whole bottle of crème de violette for one teaspoon, to make a drink for a newsletter, is going to haunt my bar cabinet for the next decade. Maybe longer.
Was it worth it? I mean, the drink was pretty good. It’s a bit like those old soap candies. Do you like them? Do you not like them? It’s a bit like drinking a flower. On the plus side, finding another use for maraschino liqueur is a plus. The colour is incredible, and that makes it a fun one to serve up after a long week in the slop mines.
And it was doubly worth it, as the cocktail book - available online - had a treasure trove of old ads in it and a lot more things to try - even some with crème de violette. He must have had that same problem.
What do you do with all that crème de violette? I guess you start making these classics: The Blue Moon (no maraschino), The Water Lily (try swapping the violette with Cointreau), or The Moonlight (swap the maraschino for Cointreau). It’s worth noting that by 1930, the Savoy Cocktail Book skipped the crème de violette.
The Drink Cart. A newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won't shut up about it. Wednesdays and Fridays.
Rough end for Mr. Peanut.