I feel for the parents of kids with severe peanut allergies. For reasons no one seems to understand, this once-rare condition is now pretty common. So common, even the saintliest package of locally sourced, cruelty -free kale wafers has to confess on its package that it was made in a plant that processes peanuts. A co-worker tells me peanuts are banned outright at her kids’ school.
Watching their product become the food world’s equivalent to arsenic can’t be much fun for America’s peanut farmers. Coming up with a new campaign to promote peanuts could not have been much fun for the creative team, either, since you can’t acknowledge the 800-lb. legume in the room.
Hence the weirdly context-free new Peanut Board campaign:
This is pretty innocuous, even with the word “Powerful” in the headline.
I saw this ad on a commuter train, so I had plenty of time to do what I do way too much: make up snarky, immature alternate headlines. I’m not proud that I do this–it just comes over me, like a sneeze. How about…
“Peanuts. There’s an Epi Pen in every bag!”
Or my favorite:
“Allergic to peanuts? More for us!”
Belly of the Beast 