A Cheez-It trolled a Pop-Tart, and college football bowl season may never be the same

By AJ Willingham, CNN

(CNN) — Food and football are strong allies, but this year’s slate of college football bowl games took snacking to a horrifying new level with eucharistic self-sacrifice and showers of milky goo.

It got especially weird at the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando. After the Kansas State Wildcats beat the North Carolina State Wolfpack late last week, a Pop-Tart mascot emerged from a giant toaster on the field like a frosted, googly-eyed idol. Within minutes, it was being devoured — yes, literally eaten alive — by ecstatic members of the winning team.

“Dreams really do come true,” read a sign held by the doomed Pop-Tart. Dreams of what? Winning a bowl game? Or eating a human-sized pastry (a sure sign to adjust your melatonin intake)?

Earlier, West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown was subjected to his own moment of food horror when, after beating the North Carolina Tar Heels, he fell victim to the bowl’s traditional post-game celebration: A keg of Duke’s mayonnaise straight to the dome. At least he was wearing a hat.

As if the feeling of mayo behind the ears isn’t chilling enough, the whole ritual took place under the unblinking gaze of Tubby, the Duke’s Mayo mascot, whose creation in 2022 answered the timeless question: “What if this jar of mayo were really, really scary?”

Then, before we had time to fully process these tableaux, the Cheez-It mascot got involved. During the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day, Ched-Z (that’s his government name) popped out of a giant Cheez-It box holding a sign saying “Non-Edibile Mascot.” Noted.

Ched-Z reappeared during a postgame interview, creeping up behind winning coach Josh Heupel of the Tennessee Volunteers. He stuck around just long enough to push a box of Cheez-Its into the frame, and then disappeared.

It was a fever dream all around — and for marketers, a very effective one.

Weird food mascots make good marketing stunts

These surreal stunts are being hailed as triumphs of marketing. The Pop-Tart sacrifice was the talk of social media over New Year’s weekend, and Apex Marketing Group told Front Office Sports they expect Pop-Tarts has earned more than $12 million worth of exposure from the event.

Oh, and the beef between the Pop-Tart mascot and the Cheez-It mascot? All in the family, as both brands are owned by Kellanova, the Kellogg’s spinoff company.

The Duke’s Mayo Bowl “mayo bath,” as they call it, began in 2020 and became an instant hit. Duke’s has leaned into it, and in 2022, the introduction of Tubby the nightmare mayo jar gave them another boost with his “unhinged” appearance and, of course, a line of Duke’s Mayo merch.

The benefits of these food-based horrors go both ways. Viewership for postseason bowl games outside of the College Football Playoff bracket is a mixed bag, plagued by player opt-outs, player transfers and variable levels of national interest. It’s a big quandary in sports marketing, and one that will likely get even thornier as the College Football Playoff structure expands next year.

However, more bizarre food fights could help. Sports site Awful Announcing called this year’s slate of Cheez-It flinging, mayo-dumping antics “a solution to the sliding irrelevance of bowl season.”

With the National College Football Championship coming up, and the Super Bowl a few weeks later, one shudders to think what the next big sentient food nightmare will be — and how viral it will go.

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