Why Fans Think The Pringles Super Bowl Commercial Missed The Mark

For some people, attending a yearly Super Bowl party is less about watching the two killer teams battling it out on the gridiron. For those people, it's all about those once-a-year, way-too-expensive Super Bowl commercials. These advertisements are usually as much of a short entertainment video as they are a product push, and people love them. Not everyone, however, was completely impressed with Pringles' 2021 Super Bowl commercial.

The commercial in question, as seen here on CNBC, revolves around astronauts being stranded at sea in a landing pod. Instead of the command center sending them help and saving their lives like any responsible organization would, they're busy stacking together different flavors of Pringles, which is already a cardinal sin in some fan's books. The astronauts then spot a ship that might be the only thing that frees them from the oceanic prison, but instead of saving the stranded astronauts, the crew passes them by because they're too distracted from stacking Pringles at their odd, Pringles-themed dance party. The end.

The commercial might not seem problematic to you, and that's fine, but some fans think it misses the mark for a number of unimportant reasons. And, you know, one that has some serious impacts if Pringles was trying to sell their product.

Outside the sheer number of fans on the internet, like @BullManUGA and @mearn over at Twitter, who think the commercial was off because, and we quote, "Has anyone in history ever put different Pringles flavors together like that?" — a seemingly unimportant reason to bash what others think was a fantastic commercial, some internetians believe the commercial was pointless in the classical sense of the word.

To many, the commercial didn't resonate at all. Fans had a difficult time deciphering what the short advertising segment was trying to say with their astronaut-abandoning theme. Twitter user @awolk, for example, said he had "zero idea" what the commercial was about and asks if it was some sort of "inside joke." Another, @RichLightShed, wrote it was a "Nice way to waste $5 mm," and several football fans hopped on the Twitter line to agree with him. Yet another viewer, @NicholsCarleigh, says, "I didn't care much for the Pringles commercial. Positioning/takeaway wasn't super clear beyond their usual 'stacks.'"

To another, lesser-extent, a few fans, such as @hooplooops, complained about the company's new logo, but that's not something that will usually put fans off like, say, paying for a Super Bowl ad that the viewers don't understand.