2023 had barely begun when M&M’s, a brand of chocolate candy, embarked on the most brain-deadening ad campaign we’ve witnessed in some time. First, the company released an all-women mascot package that drew inevitable ire from the Fox News crowd. Then, content that its trap had been sprung, it announced the retirement of its line-up of chocolate orb people in favor of new spokesperson, Maya Rudolph. Other brands suckled onto the publicity teat distended like a boil from the effort as the deeply cynical, deeply stupid culture war carried on toward the outcome we all saw on the horizon: A Super Bowl ad starring Rudolph that, after it aired last night, was followed up with the mascots reinstated and order restored to the world of Brands.
The punchline on this soul-weakening, month-long joke sees Rudolph make her public debut as the representative of “candy-coated clam bites.” The commercial includes a song, people making faces as they try the new formula, and the red M&M popping up toward the end with a sign that reads “HELP!”
Soon afterward, the second half of the marketing plan was launched through a follow-up commercial, this one reassuring a troubled world that the M&M’s mascots are now “back for good” and that—no really, guys!—the whole clam bite thing was a bit. The chocolate creatures take questions at a press conference and a new slogan promises that M&M’s are transcending partisan politics. They are now “for all funkind.”
The commercial puts everything back in place. The orange M&M once again suffers from an anxiety disorder as a fun quirk, the red M&M is a smirking rascal, and the purple and green M&Ms are wearing whatever kind of shoes the internet needs them to wear in order to find them sexually enticing. Thank god.
Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com