There is something deeply strange happening in the world of food advertising, and most of us have simply agreed not to talk about it.
A smiling piece of food looks directly at us and essentially says, “Hello! I’m delicious. Please eat me.”
Cereal pieces leap happily into bowls. Peanuts wear hats and monocles. Candy characters joke about being eaten. Chickens advertise chicken restaurants. Pigs promote barbecue. Hot dogs wave from signs outside hot dog stands.
If you stop and think about it for more than a few seconds, the entire concept becomes slightly horrifying.
So why are food mascots so often the very food they are asking us to eat?
Meet the Spokesfood
Advertising has long relied on mascots because a character is easier to remember than a package or company logo. Give a product eyes, arms, legs and a personality, and suddenly consumers aren't merely looking at breakfast cereal or candy. They're meeting someone.
That strategy has produced what might best be called the “spokesfood”: an anthropomorphic version of a product whose primary job is convincing us that eating its kind is a wonderful idea.
The technique is especially common with foods that aren't naturally visually exciting.
A peanut is just a peanut.
Give him a top hat, monocle, gloves and cane, however, and you get Mr. Peanut, one of the most recognizable advertising mascots in American history.
M&M's are tiny pieces of candy. Give them faces, personalities and an ongoing dysfunctional social life, and suddenly Red, Yellow and the rest of the gang can star in commercials for decades.
The product becomes a character.
Unfortunately for the character, the product is also dinner.
The Mascot Makes the Food Feel Alive
Humans are extraordinarily good at seeing personalities in things that aren't human. Put two dots and a curved line on practically anything and our brains immediately recognize a face.
Advertisers take full advantage of this.
When food receives eyes, a mouth, hands and a voice, it becomes more emotionally engaging. Children especially respond to recognizable characters, but adults aren't immune to the effect.
The mascot can be funny, sarcastic, adventurous, sophisticated or mischievous.
Suddenly the food has a personality.
That personality can then become part of the product's identity.
Tony the Tiger isn't merely a tiger who happens to like Frosted Flakes. His enthusiasm, athleticism and famous “They're Gr-r-reat!” helped turn the cereal into something energetic and exciting.
The Kool-Aid Man doesn't merely advertise Kool-Aid. He crashes through walls like a gigantic pitcher-shaped superhero apparently unconcerned with property damage.
Mascots allow companies to create entire fictional worlds around otherwise ordinary grocery-store products.
But Why Make the Mascot the Food Itself?
Because there may be no better advertisement for a product than the product enthusiastically endorsing itself.
Imagine a cartoon hamburger saying:
“Hamburgers are delicious!”
Now imagine a smiling hamburger saying:
“I'M delicious!”
The second version is far more memorable.
It eliminates the distance between spokesperson and product. The mascot becomes a walking demonstration of exactly what the company is selling.
There is also an oddly reassuring message hidden inside the joke.
The food doesn't mind being eaten.
In fact, it seems thrilled about it.
The smiling cookie isn't frightened.
The cartoon chicken isn't running away.
The happy sausage isn't screaming.
Everyone involved appears completely comfortable with the arrangement.
Except perhaps anyone who thinks about it too long.
The Strange World of the Suicidal Food Mascot
The phenomenon has become so recognizable that advertising critics and pop-culture observers sometimes jokingly describe these characters as “suicidal food” — mascots that actively participate in, encourage or celebrate their own consumption.
And there are varying degrees of weirdness.
At the mild end are characters representing a product without explicitly discussing their fate.
Then there are characters who openly acknowledge that they are edible.
And finally, there is perhaps the strangest category: animal mascots promoting foods made from their own species.
A smiling pig advertising bacon raises questions Mr. Peanut never has to answer.
A chicken holding a platter of fried chicken is essentially participating in a poultry version of The Silence of the Lambs.
Restaurants, butcher shops and barbecue businesses have historically loved this imagery. Vintage advertising is filled with cheerful pigs, cows, chickens and fish apparently delighted to assist humans in consuming them.
The underlying message is remarkably consistent:
“Don't worry. I'm happy about this.”
Animals Selling Their Own Species
This particular tradition probably developed partly because animals provided an easy visual shorthand.
If a restaurant sells chicken, put a chicken on the sign.
If it specializes in seafood, use a fish.
If it sells barbecue, a pig instantly communicates pork.
Before customers read a single word, they already understand what is being sold.
Making the animal cheerful also removes some of the uncomfortable reality behind meat production. Instead of thinking about livestock becoming food, consumers see a friendly cartoon animal.
The animal becomes less like an actual creature and more like a symbol for a flavor category.
A smiling pig doesn't represent a pig anymore.
It represents barbecue.
Advertising has transformed the animal into a brand.
Candy Gets Especially Weird
Candy mascots take the idea in another direction because many of them are literally walking versions of the product.
The M&M's characters may be the ultimate example.
They know they're candy.
Other characters know they're candy.
Humans know they're candy.
And commercials have repeatedly played with the possibility that somebody might eat them.
That should make the characters terrifying.
Instead, it makes them funny.
The humor works precisely because audiences understand the contradiction. These characters have personalities and emotions, yet they're also snacks.
Advertising doesn't always hide the absurdity.
Sometimes it embraces it.
Why Aren't We Horrified?
Because cartoons create emotional distance.
A realistic pig begging us to eat pork would be disturbing.
A smiling cartoon pig wearing a chef's hat and holding barbecue tongs feels whimsical.
Stylization changes the emotional rules.
We don't interpret anthropomorphic food characters as living creatures in the same way we interpret humans or animals. They exist in a strange advertising universe where being eaten isn't necessarily death.
Sometimes it is practically their career goal.
That absurdity can actually make advertisements more memorable.
The human brain notices contradictions.
A cow selling beef is contradictory.
A cookie excited about being eaten is contradictory.
A piece of candy desperately trying not to become dessert is contradictory.
And contradictions make excellent comedy.
There Is Another Clever Trick Happening
Food mascots also help separate the finished product from where it actually came from.
Consider meat.
A supermarket package of bacon is physically far removed from the animal it once was. Advertising can push that separation even further by replacing the real animal with a cartoon version.
The pig becomes cheerful.
The chicken becomes silly.
The cow becomes lovable.
The uncomfortable realities of food production disappear behind a smile and a pair of cartoon gloves.
Ironically, giving the animal more personality can sometimes make the food itself feel less connected to a real animal.
The mascot isn't livestock.
It's a character.
Kids Changed the Mascot Game
The rise of children's advertising made anthropomorphic food especially powerful.
Breakfast cereal companies discovered that colorful characters could transform products into miniature entertainment franchises.
Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Lucky the Leprechaun, the Trix Rabbit and countless others weren't simply advertising breakfast. They created stories children could follow from commercial to commercial.
Some mascots represented the food.
Others desperately wanted the food.
That second category created another brilliant advertising formula.
The Trix Rabbit can never quite get Trix.
The Cookie Crisp characters have often been obsessed with obtaining Cookie Crisp.
Lucky has spent decades protecting Lucky Charms from people trying to steal them.
The message is wonderfully simple:
This food is so desirable that entire fictional lives revolve around getting it.
Food becomes treasure.
Then There Are Mascots Who Are NOT the Food
Interestingly, some of the most famous food mascots avoid the cannibalistic problem entirely.
Toucan Sam isn't made of Froot Loops.
Tony the Tiger isn't asking children to eat tiger-flavored Frosted Flakes.
The Pillsbury Doughboy comes dangerously close, considering his doughy composition, but we'll allow advertising philosophers to debate that one.
These characters act more like traditional spokespeople. They recommend the product rather than physically embodying it.
Yet characters that are the food have one major advantage.
Instant recognition.
A talking peanut tells you what is being sold before the commercial even begins.
The Mascot Can Even Become Bigger Than the Product
Eventually, successful mascots develop identities almost independent of whatever they're selling.
People collect vintage advertising featuring food characters. Mascots appear on shirts, toys, Christmas ornaments, lunchboxes and memorabilia.
Some receive redesigns.
Some disappear.
Some return because consumers demand them back.
Some become pop-culture celebrities.
At that point, something remarkable has happened.
Advertising has transformed groceries into entertainment.
You aren't simply buying cereal.
You're buying the cereal with that character.
And Yes, It Is Still Weird
We have lived with anthropomorphic food advertising for so long that its basic premise barely registers anymore.
But strip away decades of marketing familiarity and it becomes gloriously bizarre.
Imagine explaining it to someone unfamiliar with advertising:
“We gave the cookie consciousness.”
Why?
“So it could convince us to eat cookies.”
Does the cookie know what happens when we eat it?
“Sometimes.”
Is it concerned?
“Usually not.”
In fact, it might be smiling and giving us a thumbs-up.
Food mascots work because they turn ordinary products into characters, make brands easier to recognize, soften uncomfortable associations and create opportunities for humor and storytelling.
But perhaps their greatest achievement is convincing generations of consumers that there is nothing remotely unusual about a smiling piece of food enthusiastically encouraging us to eat it.
The next time you see a cheerful pig advertising barbecue, a dancing piece of candy or a smiling hot dog waving from a restaurant sign, take a second look.
That mascot isn't just selling dinner.
It may very well be dinner.
When Sausage Party Took the Joke to Its Logical Extreme
Perhaps no piece of pop culture has played with the bizarre idea of happy, anthropomorphic food quite as aggressively as the 2016 animated comedy Sausage Party. The movie takes the familiar advertising image of cheerful groceries with personalities and asks one wonderfully disturbing question: What would happen if the food discovered what humans actually do with it?
At the beginning of the film, the foods in a supermarket believe that being chosen by humans means they are being taken to “The Great Beyond,” a glorious paradise awaiting them outside the store. Then comes the kitchen scene.
The fantasy collapses.
The groceries witness humans slicing, peeling, cooking and eating food just like them, transforming an ordinary meal preparation into a full-blown horror movie from the food's point of view. Potatoes are peeled, vegetables are chopped and terrified foods suddenly realize that the supposedly benevolent “gods” who selected them haven't brought them home to paradise.
They brought them home for dinner.
It's funny because Sausage Party exposes the unspoken absurdity behind generations of food advertising. We have spent decades watching smiling hot dogs, peanuts, candies, cookies, fruits and vegetables behave like happy little people while simultaneously accepting that their entire purpose is to be eaten.
The movie simply allows the food to finally figure that out.
In that sense, Sausage Party may be the ultimate parody of the cheerful food mascot. It takes an advertising convention we've barely questioned and follows it to its darkest—and funniest—possible conclusion.
After nearly a century of smiling food telling us, “Eat me!”
Someone finally made a movie where the food responded:
“Wait... WHAT?”
Sausage Party: The Kitchen Massacre (2016)
