Mr. Peanut Is Dead, but Instead of Eulogies He's Getting Brutal Roasts

It's a bit unfortunate that Planters decided to launch a campaign killing off their famous monocle-wearing mascot Mr. Peanut on the same day it was announced that Monty Python founder Terry Jones has died, but it's 2020, capitalism is crumbling, and nothing is surprising anymore, so here we are. 

In a cryptic tweet, the official Mr. Peanut account announced that the dapper peanut man had kicked the bucket at the moldy old age of 104. And people kind of went wild, but maybe not in the way you'd expect. Most are glad to be rid of that dusty old relic and believe Mr. Peanut, like all bad nuts, is roasting in hell. 

Twitter went (pardon the pun) nuts when "The Estate of Mr. Peanut" announced his passing. They claimed he sacrificed himself to save his friends, but I wasn't sure. That seemed like an uncharacteristically generous move for a fancy capitalist peanut who wears a top hat and a monocle. But then, Planters shared a new commercial.

Now, you may be asking yourself, can a peanut die? It's a legume. After it's plucked off the tree, it's no longer alive in any sense of the word. Mr. Peanut may have been anthropomorphic, but he was still a peanut. So letting go, crashing to the Earth, and blowing up in a fire wasn't, probably, as painful for him as it would have been for Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes, the two eerily committed comic actors who agreed to appear in that ad. Still, some mourned the loss of Mr. Peanut.

Jim is not the only one to speculate that Mr. Peanut was murdered (again, assuming he can die). Plenty of people hooked onto the idea that Mr. Peanut knew something he wasn't supposed to and that he was about to talk. 

But honestly, most people were glad to be rid of the creeper.

This tweet has almost two thousand likes. People really didn't like Mr. Peanut. To be fair, he did seem quite pretentious for a literal shell of a man. Not to mention, he represented everything terrible about capitalism. 

Mr. Peanut was basically the Jeff Bezos of the legume world. He exploited millions — billions, probably — of his own kind for profit. The problem with hoping Mr. Peanut roasts in hell is that roasted peanuts are delicious. I don't even think Mr. Peanut deserves that fate. I think he should rot. Have you ever accidentally eaten a rotten peanut? Those things are disgusting.

Mr. Peanut was like a corporate-sponsored Hannibal Lecter. He was evil. Turns out everyone has known the real story behind Mr. Peanut for years. It's only now that he's gone people feel comfortable speaking the truth. They say not to speak ill of the dead, but what about when the dead guy was a genocidal maniac? 

Hm, interesting, isn't it? Mr. Peanut's death doesn't seem to be an accident or the selfless act Planters is purporting. It seems  Mr. Peanut was about to pay for his decades of abuse when he turned up crushed on the ground, like some sort of pad thai topping.

This decade has truly been something else when it comes to how brands present themselves to the world. All of a sudden, social media managers behind the Twitter accounts of Wendy's and Moon Pies and the state of New Jersey are trying to build a brand based on nihilist jokes and hopeless existential crises. It's bizarre. And we're all complicit. The retweeting, the liking, the writing articles about it. WE killed Mr. Peanut. We practically asked for his. Oh god.

Nevertheless, let's just be glad he's gone. He can no longer hurt his fellow peanuts, and he can no longer cause anaphylaxis in those with peanut allergies. The world is better off without Mr. Peanut. But... is he really gone for good?

I bet Ian's right. In fact, that blast probably didn't burn him up. It probably roasted him to a perfect, delicious temperature. "And by the way?" Ian adds in a follow-up tweet, "He didn't even 'die.' His shell got cracked. The peanuts themselves are free now. Mr. Peanut was basically 'two kids in a trench coat' and now they can live their lives." It's so true. Mr. Peanut was really just an evil, capitalist shell holding two innocent peanuts hostage for 104 years. You will nut be missed, Mr. Peanut.