Pop-Tarts paints a bleak picture of traditional pretzels to promote its new pretzel pastries in its Super Bowl debut.
The 30-second spot kicks off with a woman struggling with a traditional pretzel in a retro infomercial spoof with a drab display, complete with faceless assistants. “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness appears and does a snack makeover quicker than any hair overhaul he’s handled on the Netflix show.
“Pop-Tarts fixed that for you,” says Van Ness. Soon, everything from the woman’s snack to her gray sweatsuit gets a snap makeover.
“From ho-hum to so yum,” Van Ness says in the spot, which comes from MRY.
“Infomercials are a tried-and-true format for launching new product innovations, so we wanted to create a self-aware infomercial that lived up to that ingenuity," James Wood, head of creative at MRY, said in a statement. "Our priority was to work with a genuine, outspoken fan of Pop-Tarts, and Jonathan has more than proven his fan cred.”