Planters Nut & Chocolate Company is an American snack food company now owned by
Hormel Foods. Planters is best known for its processed
nuts
Nut often refers to:
* Nut (fruit), fruit composed of a hard shell and a seed, or a collective noun for dry and edible fruits or seeds
* Nut (hardware), fastener used with a bolt
Nut or Nuts may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Com ...
and for the
Mr. Peanut icon that symbolizes them.
Mr. Peanut was created by grade schooler Antonio Gentile for a 1916 contest to design the company's brand icon.
The design was modified by a commercial artist and has continued to change over the years.
History
Planters was founded by
Italian immigrant
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
Amedeo Obici in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He started his career as a bellhop and fruit stand vendor in
Scranton, Pennsylvania. Obici later moved to Wilkes-Barre, opened his own fruit stand, and invested in a peanut roaster. Obici turned peddler within a few years, using a horse and wagon, and calling himself "The Peanut Specialist". In 1906, Obici entered a partnership with
Mario Peruzzi
Mario Peruzzi (September 8, 1875 – December 10, 1955) was an Italian-born American businessman and manufacturer. His business career at the beginning consisted of managing wholesale merchandise of various groceries and confectioneries. Hi ...
, the soon to be owner of Planters. Peruzzi had developed his own method of blanching whole roasted peanuts, doing away with the troublesome hulls and skins; and so with six employees, two large roasters, and crude machinery, Planters was founded. Amedeo Obici believed that prices and first profits were as important as repeat business, focusing his operation on quality and brand name for continued success. Two years later, the firm was incorporated as Planters Nut and Chocolate Company. By 1913, Obici had moved to
Suffolk, Virginia
Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as such has no county. As of the 2020 census, the population was 94,324. It is the 9th most populous city in Virginia and the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area as ...
, the peanut capital of the world, and opened the company's first mass production plant and facility there. In 1950, the company created a puzzle called "PLANTERSPEANUTSPUZZLE" and offered prizes for that. It was acquired by
Standard Brands
Standard Brands was a packaged foods company, formed in 1929 by J. P. Morgan with the merger of:
* Fleischmann Company
*Royal Baking Powder Company
* E. W. Gillett Company of Canada (1929) - Toronto-based baking goods company (maker of Magic Bak ...
in 1960. In 1981, Standard Brands merged with
Nabisco Brands
Nabisco (, abbreviated from the earlier name National Biscuit Company) is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
Nabisco's ...
, which was acquired by
Kraft Foods in 2000. Kraft subsequently merged with the H.J.
Heinz
The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six conti ...
Company to form
Kraft Heinz in 2015.
On January 22, 2020, Planters released a teaser for its
Super Bowl LIV commercial featuring Mr. Peanut with
Wesley Snipes and
Matt Walsh. The trio were shown hanging onto a branch after accidentally driving the
Nutmobile off a cliff, with Mr. Peanut electing to let go and fall to his presumed death, and the Nutmobile on the ground suddenly exploding. The company's social media outlets declared Mr. Peanut to have died, although a company spokesperson told ''
Advertising Age'' that they had not ruled out the scenario being a
comic book death. However, Planters pulled the ad and the marketing for it five days later after the
death of Kobe Bryant.
Planters suspended the campaign on January 26, shortly after the
2020 Calabasas helicopter crash
On January 26, 2020, a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter crashed in the city of Calabasas, California, around northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, while en route from John Wayne Airport to Camarillo Airport. All nine people on board were killed: retire ...
which resulted in the death of everyone onboard, including former
NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
player
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryant ( ; August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020) was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely r ...
. 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 mascots
Kool-Aid Man and
Mr. Clean. However, Kool-Aid Man's tears combined with sunlight cause a new, younger incarnation of Mr. Peanut, dubbed "Baby Nut", to grow from the soil.
Since the premiere of the commercial, the Planters
Twitter account has been 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.
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 "
Baby Yoda
Grogu, colloquially referred to as Baby Yoda, is a character from the '' Star Wars'' Disney+ original television series ''The Mandalorian''. He is a toddler member of the same species as the ''Star Wars'' characters Yoda and Yaddle, with whom he ...
" of ''
The Mandalorian'', and
Groot.
Explaining the intent of the campaign, a spokesman for Planters's 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.
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.
In February 2021,
Kraft Heinz announced it will sell Planters and its other nuts businesses to
Hormel for $3.35 billion. The transaction was completed on June 7.
Slogans
Advertising
taglines have included:
* "The Nickel Lunch!" – peanuts/peanut bars (1930s–1940s)
* "Planters is the word for (good) Peanuts." (Various products – 1950s)
* "America is Nuts for Planters" (1970s)
* "Everybody Loves a Nut!" (1990s)
* "Peanut butter with a crunch." (P.B. Crisps – 1992)
* "Relax. Go Nuts." (Deluxe Mixed Nuts – 1997)
* "Put Out the Good Stuff." (Various products – 2003)
* "Instinctively Good." (Various products – 2007)
* "Naturally Remarkable." (Various products – 2011)
* "Deliciously NUT-RITIOUS." (UK range – 2016)
* "Harness the Power of the Peanut"
* "A Nut Above"
* "Become One With the Nut"
* "It's Nuts How Good They Are"
* "The Power is in the Peanut"
Products
*
Cheez Balls (discontinued and reintroduced in 2018)
*
Cheez Curls (discontinued and reintroduced in 2018)
* Cocktail Peanuts
*
Cooking oil
Cooking oil is plant, animal, or synthetic liquid fat used in frying, baking, and other types of cooking. It is also used in food preparation and flavoring not involving heat, such as salad dressings and bread dips, and may be called edible oil. ...
*
CornNuts (acquired in late 1990s)
* Chocolate Covered Cashews
* Dry Roasted Peanuts
* Dry Roasted
Sunflower kernels
*
Honey Roasted Peanuts
Honey-roasted peanuts is a salt-, sugar- and honey-flavored peanut snack food that is provided as a mass-produced product line by several nut and snack food companies, such as Planters, The Sun Valley Nut Co, and King Nut.
History
Before the 1 ...
* Honey Roasted Cashews
* Hot Peanuts
* Mixed Nuts
* NUT-rition Heart Healthy Mix
* Salted
Cashew
The cashew tree (''Anacardium occidentale'') is a tropical evergreen tree native to South America in the genus ''Anacardium'' that produces the cashew seed and the cashew apple accessory fruit. The tree can grow as tall as , but the dwarf cult ...
s
* Salted Peanuts
* Salted Redskin Spanish Peanuts
* Tavern Nuts (discontinued and reintroduced in 2009)
* Smoked Almonds
* Peanut Butter
* Potato Chips
* Salted Caramel Peanuts
* Cocoa Peanuts
* Chipotle Peanuts
* Chili and Lime Peanuts
* Sea Salt and Vinegar
* Heat Peanuts
* Smoked Peanuts
* Sweet N' Crunchy Peanuts
* Nut Clusters
Discontinued
* Jumbo Block Peanut Candy (presumably discontinued)
* Coconut Balls
* Corn Chips
* P.B. Crackers
* P.B. Crisps (introduced in 1992)
* Peanut Butter Chocolates
* Peanut Bar
* Peanut Butter candies
* Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies
* Onion Peanuts
* Garlic Peanuts
* Dry Roasted Cashews
* Dry Roasted Peanuts (original version)
International
While used under license from Kraft Canada, Planters in
Canada is made by JVF Canada. Some Planters items do not use the Planters name, but are sold under the Kraft brand name in Canada. As of 2015, Planters Peanut Butter and Kraft Peanut Butter are both available.
As of 2016, Planters has launched into the
United Kingdom with a range of 14 products under the tagline "Deliciously NUT-RITIOUS". Planters in the UK is made by Trigon Snacks Trading Ltd. at their factory in
Aintree in
Liverpool.
Vegan concerns
Some Planters nut products such as their larger-sized jars of peanuts contain
gelatin
Gelatin or gelatine (from la, gelatus meaning "stiff" or "frozen") is a translucent, colorless, flavorless food ingredient, commonly derived from collagen taken from animal body parts. It is brittle when dry and rubbery when moist. It may also ...
, making them unsuitable for
vegans.
References
External links
*
{{authority control
1906 establishments in Pennsylvania
American companies established in 1906
Food and drink companies established in 1906
Companies based in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
Hormel Foods brands
Peanut dishes
Snack food manufacturers of Pennsylvania
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
2021 mergers and acquisitions