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Were Mr. Peanut and His Monocle a Casualty of Class Warfare?

Photo credit: Planters
Photo credit: Planters

From Town & Country

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020, will enter into the annals as a momentous day in American, indeed world, history. It wasn’t just day two of Trump's impeachment trial. And it wasn’t just the era-ending day the Giants’ Eli Manning (one of the NFL’s dorkiest, yet most successful quarterbacks) fled to retirement. No, it was something even more earth-shaking than that. Yesterday marked the death of Mr. Peanut, the monocle-wearing top-hat-sporting cane-carrying mascot of Planters, a division of Kraft Foods.

At 104, it is indeed surprising that Mr. Peanut—whose real name was Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe—survived so long. He endured five wars, a Depression, two recessions, the Iran Hostage Crisis, Watergate, 'NSync, scrunchies, and also, increasingly, rampant nut allergies.

But in other ways, that a mascot whose most recognizable feature (apart from being an anthropomorphic legume) was his late 19th century capitalist attire bit the dust this year isn’t all that surprising.

Photo credit: Mike Lawrie - Getty Images
Photo credit: Mike Lawrie - Getty Images

We are, in this very moment, living in a bitterly divided world. On the one hand, the President of the United States delights in ostentatious displays of wealth (and, lest we forget, umbrella abandonment, ritual humiliation, sexual assault, and also treason). On the other hand, and in clear contrapunction, those self-same displays of ostentation are currently shunned not only by the truly rich—who prefer fleece vests to morning coats and beanies to top hats—but, and here’s the strange thing, corporations too. When given the choice, even Kraft Foods, Planters parent company, has eaten the rich.

It’s worth pausing for a moment to note the circumstance of Mr. Peanut's death and where it falls in the political and economic climate. Since Larry David-impersonator and current presidential candidate Bernie Sanders started inveighing against millionaires and billionaires—spurred no doubt by steady income inequality staring in 1980—gobsmacking displays of wealth have begun to seem a bit declassé.

Oh, they happen, of course, but more discretely. Meanwhile, nearly simultaneously, guys like Mitt Romney and the United States Supreme Court were stanning for the personhood of corporations. The court in Citizens United; Romney in 2011 with his “Corporations are people,” gaffe. Simultaneously, social media platforms like Twitter allowed corporate mascots—think Mr. Peanut, Mr. Clean, Wendy, et al—to have a brand voice that was at once informal and human. This is what is generally called "Brand Twitter."

Photo credit: Planters
Photo credit: Planters

So then 2019 rolls around and Kraft Heinz is having a terrible year. In February, their stock plunges 27%, after they announced a $15.4 billion write down and a subpoena by the S.E.C. into their accounting practices. And so they’re looking around like, “Shit, what can we do? Somethings gotta give.”

Aid Man, Kool-Aid’s mascot comes into their line of vision. “Sugar is bad,” they think, “but he is cool.” The Jell-O guy is already in prison. Little Oscar, the Oscar Mayer mascot, died in 2005. He lived in Indiana. Then they spot poor Mr. Peanut, twirling his cane and whistling like a dodo at the end of the table, and he doesn’t even realize that the whole room is looking at him, but they are. Kool-Aid Man goes up to him, kisses him on the mouth, says, “I know it was you, Peanut, you broke my heart.” Mr. Peanut was so flustered his monocle fell from his eye.

So they plan the whole thing, for maximum effect. They’re like hey Peanut, wanna go on a road trip with your friends Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh? Mr. Peanut is like, you mean the guy who dodged his taxes and the guy from Veep? Absolutely. They hook him up in the NutMobile—Walsh in the back seat; Snipes sitting shotgun—and send him to the Southwest, to the land of mesas and winding canyon roads.

Surprise, surprise, there’s an armadillo in the middle of the road. The Peanut—who, it should be noted, is wearing a monocle while driving which seems…wrong—swerves and loses control of the vehicle. Over the rim they tumble: NutMobile, Snipes, Walsh, and Mr. Peanut. They find themselves clinging to a branch, Looney Tunes-style.

The branch begins to break. While Snipes and Walsh bicker about who should let go, it falls to Mr. Peanut to play the part of the martyr. With a nod of his hat, he lets go, thereby, one supposes, saving the lives of Walsh and Snipes. He falls to the canyon floor, onto the NutMobile that preceded him. The whole thing explodes. Cut to black. A silhouette of Mr. Planter. 1916-2020.

Already, Corporate Twitter has gone into lamentation and great pots of ink spilled mourning his passing.

And we’re left with more questions than answers. Is it the end of an era in which wealth is exalted? Do we also mourn the personhood of corporations with the passing of Mr. Peanut?

Or are we instead told a parable—dreamed up by brand managers—in which a peanut costumed as a capitalist, the dapper face of a ten billion dollar company, saves us from ourselves in an act of noblesse oblige while we, benighted humans, cling to a breaking branch and count ourselves lucky?

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