Mr. Peanut

Mr. Peanutis the advertisinglogoandmascotofPlanters, an American snack-food company owned byHormel. He is depicted as ananthropomorphicpeanutin its shell, wearing the formal clothing of an old-fashionedgentleman, with atop hat,monocle, white gloves,spats, and cane. He is reported of British heritage and has the proper name ofBartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe.
Planters Peanut Company was founded in 1906 inWilkes-Barre, PennsylvaniabyAmedeo Obici, and incorporated two years later as the Planters Nut and Chocolate Company. In 1916, a young schoolboy, Antonio Gentile, submitted drawings of an anthropomorphic peanut to a design contest.When his design was chosen, commercial artist Andrew S. Wallach added the monocle, top hat, and cane to create the iconic image.Gentile's family originally received five dollars for winning the contest. Obici befriended them and paid Antonio’s, and four of his siblings', way through college. After Obici paid Antonio's way through medical school as well, Antonio became a doctor inNewport News, where he died of a heart attack in 1939.
There is a disputed claim that Frank P. Krize Sr., a Wilkes-Barre artist and head of the Suffolk plant, made the additions of the monocle, top hat, and cane. Wallach's daughter, Virginia, maintains that Krize joined the project after Mr. Peanut was created. However, neither Planters' history nor other sources still in circulation positively identify the artist.
By the mid-1930s, the raffish figure had come to symbolize the entire peanut industry. Mr. Peanut has appeared on almost every Planters package and advertisement and is one of the best-knowniconsin advertising history.He has appeared in manyTV commercialsas ananimated cartooncharacter. More recent commercials have shown himstop-motion animatedin a real-world setting.
In 2005, Mr. Peanut was shown inMasterCard's "Icons" commercial duringSuper Bowl XXXIX, which depicts several advertising mascots having dinner together.
In 2006, Planters held an online contest to determine whether to add abow tie,cufflinks, orpocketwatchto Mr. Peanut. The public voted for no changes.
While the character's television commercials were often accompanied by an accented narrator, Mr. Peanut never had dialogue. On November 8, 2010, Planters announced that actorRobert Downey Jr.would become Mr. Peanut's first-ever voice actor.
In 2011, Mr. Peanut's "stunt double", Peanut Butter Doug, was introduced to tie in with the Planter's Peanut Butter launch. The character is voiced byKevin Dillon.
On July 1, 2013, Planters cast comedian andSaturday Night LivealumnusBill Haderas the voice for a campaign focusing on its Planters Nut-rition product line.
In 2017, theVirginia General Assemblypassed a joint resolution commending Mr. Peanut.
In 2018, Mr. Peanut was once again revamped, albeit for the first time since 2009, and became silent again.
On January 22, 2020, Planters released a teaser for itsSuper Bowl LIVcommercialfeaturing Mr. Peanut,Wesley SnipesandMatt Walsh. The trio was shown hanging onto a branch after accidentally driving theNutmobileoff a cliff to avoid anarmadillo, 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.
Planters suspended the campaign shortly after theCalabasas helicopter crashon January 26, which killed all passengers including formerNBAplayerKobe Bryant. They 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 mascotsKool-Aid ManandMr. 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 the premiere of the commercial, the PlantersTwitteraccount was used to make posts in character as Baby Nut. It also retweeted posts from several Baby Nutmemeaccounts created before the ad aired, promptingTwitter to suspend themunder the presumption that they were created by the company's agency tomanipulate the platformin violation of its terms of use.
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 asGroguandGroot.Explaining the intent of the campaign, a spokesman for Planters' advertising agency cited the examples ofsuperhero deathsin theMarvel Cinematic Universefor how such a death could connect with viewers and potential customers.
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."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.
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.In preparation for the sale of Planters by Kraft toHormel, 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.
In the 2010 novelMr. PeanutbyAdam Ross, a man fantasizes about killing hispeanut-allergicwife by force-feeding her peanuts."He poured out a handful and ate them and then wiped the salt from his empty hand on his pants.  He looked at the chipper Planters Peanuts man tipping his top hat hello and thought about how one bite could kill Alice dead."
The artist Vincent Trasov, dressed as Mr. Peanut, ran as ajoke candidatein the 1974Vancouver, British Columbia civic elections.