I liked The Mandalorian, the Star Wars series that Disney used to push their Disney+ streaming service. But I don鈥檛 like the monster it created.
That monster is the baby-fication of pop culture. The big-eyed, adorable children of popular characters. It was first, with the creature known as 鈥淭he Child鈥� in the show鈥檚 lore and 鈥淏aby Yoda鈥� to everyone else. It was genuinely cute, and immediately sympathetic creature with its great big eyes and tiny stature. It ate frogs and played with toys. The world was in love.
The rest of the world went 鈥渨e need more babies.鈥�
Of course, with the time needed to design these babies, we probably haven鈥檛 reached the apex. The Baby Sonic, part of the upcoming movie based on Sonic the Hedgehog, was probably in the works long before Yoda, given that movie鈥檚 troubled production history. But babies are coming, and they won鈥檛 be stopping.
The trend has already reached its nadir, thanks to the 鈥淏aby Nut,鈥� the attempt to revive Planters鈥� Mr. Peanut brand through the most ill conceived ad campaign I鈥檝e seen in a long time.
We will never see the full campaign that Planters鈥� ad agency cooked up, largely because the real world intruded into their plans to make people mourn the death of a fictional character. We know how the entire thing started, with the death of Mr. Peanut, their long-standing mascot. He died by falling to his death and then exploding, which was a bit hard to play for laughs given that Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash soon after.
The ending of this very stupid campaign came with the Super Bowl, the biggest event in advertising. Planters showed Mr. Peanut鈥檚 funeral, where the tears of the Kool-Aid Man caused a tree to sprout and a baby version of Mr. Peanut to be born, and make dolphin noises for reasons that are unclear.
He follows the Baby Yoda template with a tiny body and giant eyes. This template has been known for decades, confirmed by scientific experiments to appeal to all of our instincts to protect children. It鈥檚 hard to deny that this baby is cute.
But it鈥檚 also terrible. Not just because they called it 鈥淏aby Nut,鈥� which is very close to being an extremely rude turn of phrase. But, instead, because it鈥檚 pretty clearly hopping on a trend. Someone saw Baby Yoda, and saw recent Avengers movies where popular characters died, and they had a brainwave. Maybe this is a way for people to care about our character? A one-two punch of death and babies, harnessing pop culture trends in a very cynical way.
Hopefully Planters鈥� gambit fails 鈥� I know I鈥檓 not buying any peanuts today 鈥� but the real lesson here is that we have to prepare ourselves. Babies are coming, and they鈥檙e going to be everywhere. By the end of this all, we鈥檙e going to be so sick of babies that the birth rate will decline dramatically. That鈥檚 a wild prediction, but I鈥檓 also not looking forward to seeing what other babies are getting cooked up as we speak.
