Mr. Peanut Is Dead At 104 (Video)

When Mr. Peanut’s Big Game road trip with Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes goes awry, he ends up making the ultimate sacrifice to save his friends. Mr. Peanut died doing what he did best – having people’s backs when they needed him most. #RIPeanut

Mr. Peanut is dead. The monocle-wearing mascot of the snack food company Planters was announced deceased by the official Mr. Peanut Twitter account on January 22, at the age of 104, even though technically he should have died more than a century ago because peanuts, which are not sentient, go bad after about four months.

Yes, it is confusing for an anthropomorphized peanut to die. It also looks quite obviously like a stunt to sell more Planters peanuts, though it’s a potentially flawed marketing strategy, as Mr. Peanut is arguably more famous than Planters itself. Either way, we’re feeding the machine by talking about it at all. Sorry!

How did Mr. Peanut die?

On Wednesday morning, the Mr. Peanut Twitter account tweeted that Mr. Peanut “sacrificed himself to save his friends when they needed him the most,” and requested that followers pay their respects to the anthropomorphic peanut, whose real name, according to Google, is Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe. He was reportedly invented in 1916 by a 10-year-old boy named Anthony Gentile, who submitted a drawing of a smiling peanut with arms and legs to a trademark contest. Did you know that, canonically, Mr. Peanut is British, even though the only two celebrities to have voiced him in commercials have been Americans, Robert Downey Jr., in 2010 and Bill Hader in 2013.