Pringles’ “Pringleleo” for Super Bowl LX: A Crisp Romance That Ends in Crumbs
In the high-stakes arena of Super Bowl advertising, brands often face a binary choice: lean into heartwarming sentimentality or dive headfirst into absurdity. For Super Bowl LX, Pringles has chosen the latter, recruiting pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter for a surreal, sodium-dusted romance titled “Pringleleo.” The spot serves as a cinematic collision of the “weird girl” pop aesthetic and the snack brand’s long-running “Once You Pop” platform, resulting in a commercial that is as visually striking as it is tonally jarring.
The Creative: Weird Science Meets Italian Cinema
The narrative opens with a premise that feels ripped from a Gen Z fever dream. Carpenter, lounging in a mid-century modern home, laments her dating woes before deciding to take matters—and a canister of Original Pringles—into her own hands. Channeling a culinary Frankenstein, she constructs “Pringleleo,” a sentient mannequin made entirely of saddle-shaped potato crisps.
What follows is a beautifully shot montage set to the crooning melancholy of Fred Buscaglione’s “Guarda Che Luna.” The juxtaposition is the ad’s strongest asset; we see the couple driving in a convertible (where the wind tragically erodes Pringleleo’s arm), enjoying a candlelit dinner, and even sharing a bed. The creative team has leaned heavily into a vintage, cinematic grain that complements Carpenter’s retro-pop brand perfectly. It sells the absurdity by playing it completely straight, treating the chip-man not as a prop, but as a legitimate romantic lead.
The Critique: A Darker Shade of Crunch
However, the commercial takes a sharp turn in its final act, leading to a conclusion that has divided early audiences. When Carpenter brings her fragile beau to a red carpet premiere, the screaming fans don’t want an autograph; they want a snack. The ensuing scene, where the crowd rips Pringleleo apart limb by limb while Carpenter watches in horror, shifts the genre from rom-com to zombie horror in seconds. The final punchline—Carpenter shrugging and eating a piece of her fallen lover—cements the brand’s nihilistic loyalty to the taste above all else.
This ending brings us to the controversy. While dark humor is a staple of Super Bowl ads, there is a grotesquerie to the “feeding frenzy” that some viewers may find off-putting. The destruction of a character the audience spent 60 seconds bonding with is a risky move. It effectively turns the masses into mindless consumers, a satirical edge that might cut a little too deep for a fun snack commercial. Furthermore, the scene involving Carpenter and the chip-man in bed, while innocent on the surface, carries suggestive undertones that have already sparked debate online regarding the sexualization of food mascot imagery.
The Verdict
“Pringleleo” is undeniably memorable. It utilizes Sabrina Carpenter’s current cultural dominance effectively, without letting her completely overshadow the product—after all, the product is the co-star. The visual effects team deserves accolades for making a man made of chips look surprisingly expressive.
Yet, the execution walks a razor-thin line between clever and creepy. By anthropomorphizing the product so successfully, Pringles makes the act of eating it feel slightly cannibalistic. It is a bold, bizarre entry into the Super Bowl canon that will likely score high on recall but may leave some viewers checking their appetite at the door. It reinforces the tagline “Once you pop, the pop don’t stop,” but it also suggests that once you pop, mercy is off the table.
