Pringles Proves the Last Crisp Is Worth Getting Stuck In
Pringles' "Stuck In" is a 30-second Super Bowl commercial that aired during Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022 in the United States, dramatising the exaggerated consequence of reaching for the last crisp in the iconic Pringles tube and finding one's hand permanently lodged inside, as a humorous proof that the snack is simply worth it.
The campaign centres on a single, escalating comedic premise. A man gets his hand stuck in a Pringles can while retrieving the final crisp and remains trapped through the subsequent chapters of his life — dating, marriage, parenthood, and beyond. The absurdist escalation transforms a genuinely relatable snacking friction point into an extended joke with emotional warmth at its core. Created by Grey New York, the film runs at 30 seconds for its principal Super Bowl broadcast unit and features Lionel Richie's "Stuck on You" as its soundtrack, a piece of music casting that reinforces the comedic conceit without requiring a single line of explanatory dialogue.
Strategically, "Stuck In" marks a deliberate creative pivot for Pringles in the United States. The brand's four previous Super Bowl campaigns, spanning 2018 through 2021, all built their creative platform around flavor stacking — the practice of combining multiple Pringles flavors to create new taste profiles. "Stuck In" abandons that territory entirely, shifting focus from product variety to product desirability, using the brand's distinctive cylindrical packaging as both the problem and the punchline. Gareth Maguire, Senior Director of Marketing for Pringles, described the direction as "honing in on an insight and real situation only our fans encounter when snacking on Pringles straight out of our one-of-a-kind can," as reported by reel360.com. The Clapboard Score for "Stuck In" is 68 out of 100.
Pringles entered Super Bowl LVI having already achieved meaningful commercial momentum in the United States. The brand had reached one billion dollars in United States sales and recorded twelve percent growth in the period leading into the 2022 Big Game campaign, according to Grey New York's reporting on the campaign's context. That scale of commercial performance made the Super Bowl not a brand-building gamble but a platform for consolidating an already-expanding consumer base.
The strategic environment inside the United States snacks category during Super Bowl LVI was highly competitive. Lay's aired "Golden Memories" during the same broadcast, featuring Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen in a nostalgia-driven celebrity format, according to publicly available broadcast records. Doritos and Flamin' Hot Cheetos ran a combined 60-second spot targeting younger consumers during the same event, as documented by ispot.tv. In the United States potato-chip market, Lay's held a share exceeding forty-one percent and Ruffles approximately eighteen percent, while Pringles occupied approximately thirteen percent, according to clapboard.com's market research. That positioning made differentiation — rather than category authority — the correct strategic lens for Pringles to operate through.
The consumer insight anchoring "Stuck In" is precise and proprietary to Pringles: no other snack brand has packaging that physically traps a consumer's hand when they attempt to reach the bottom of the container. Justine Armour, Chief Creative Officer at Grey New York, noted that the insight revealed how many people had encountered this exact situation across a surprisingly long history with the brand's packaging, as quoted by reel360.com. The humor functions not as decoration but as the delivery mechanism for a genuine product truth — that the Pringles tube's shape is so distinctive it creates a consumer behaviour that belongs only to this brand. In the United States snacks landscape of 2022, that degree of insight specificity is a meaningful competitive advantage in creative strategy.
Director Tom Kuntz helmed the production of "Stuck In," bringing a filmmaking sensibility well-suited to the compressed comedic escalation the script demands. Kuntz is recognised in the advertising industry for constructing absurdist premises with visual precision, and the 30-second runtime of the principal Super Bowl spot requires every time-jump in the protagonist's life to land with immediacy. The creative team at Grey New York was led by Chief Creative Officer Justine Armour and Executive Creative Director Peter Alsante, whose collaboration shaped both the conceptual logic and the tonal register of the film.
The creative execution relies on restraint as much as invention. The core comedic device — a man navigating adulthood with a Pringles can fused to his hand — could easily become visually chaotic. Instead, the production grounds each life-stage vignette in recognisable domestic and social settings, allowing the absurdity of the stuck hand to register against a backdrop of mundane normalcy. The contrast between the extraordinary physical predicament and the ordinary circumstances surrounding it is where the humour lives, and it is a tonal choice that reflects experienced comedic direction rather than an escalation of visual gags.
The music selection is doing significant creative work. Lionel Richie's "Stuck on You" is not used ironically — it is used with full sincerity, which amplifies the joke rather than distancing the viewer from it. The song's romantic warmth reframes the man's predicament as a love story between a consumer and a snack, an emotional layer that gives the film a memorability beyond its punchline. In the United States Super Bowl commercial landscape, where music licensing decisions carry both financial and creative weight, the choice demonstrates a willingness to invest in craft elements that compound the idea rather than merely illustrate it. The film contains one media asset in its documented campaign form, focusing creative investment entirely on the broadcast spot rather than fragmenting attention across multiple executions.
Measurable performance data for "Stuck In" is available from multiple named sources. Grey New York reported that the campaign generated more than two billion impressions, more than doubling the reach of Pringles' previous Super Bowl campaign, according to Grey's own published reporting on the effort. TapResearch reported approximately an eleven percent increase in brand favorability among viewers who were exposed to the ad, according to Blog Tapresearch. These figures position "Stuck In" as a campaign that delivered meaningful amplification relative to its predecessor in the United States market.
In the consumer ranking environment, the spot placed thirty-first on USA Today's 2022 Ad Meter, the annual consumer-voted ranking of Super Bowl commercials, as documented by USA Today. No verified major advertising industry awards — including Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC — are publicly recorded for "Stuck In" as of the time of this analysis. The Ad Meter placement reflects a consumer reception that was positive without being elite, which is consistent with a campaign built around relatability and warmth rather than formal creative ambition.
Structurally, "Stuck In" demonstrates strong brand linkage — a persistent weakness in many Super Bowl executions — because the Pringles can is the literal protagonist of the narrative from the first frame to the last. The campaign's single-minded focus on the brand's proprietary packaging shape means recall and attribution are reinforced by every scene, a design quality that contributes to the favorability lift reported by TapResearch. The Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100 reflects a campaign with clear creative logic and genuine brand insight, balanced against the absence of major industry recognition and a mid-tier consumer ranking among a crowded Super Bowl field.
Pringles' "Stuck In" is a 30-second Super Bowl commercial from 2022 in which a man's hand becomes permanently lodged in a Pringles tube while reaching for the last crisp. The film follows him through marriage and parenthood with the can still attached, set to Lionel Richie's "Stuck on You," arguing the snack is simply worth it.
Pringles aired "Stuck In" during Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022. The spot ran in the United States as a 30-second broadcast unit and was created by Grey New York, directed by Tom Kuntz, with music from Lionel Richie's catalogue reinforcing the campaign's central comedic and emotional conceit.
"Stuck In" ranked thirty-first on USA Today's 2022 Ad Meter consumer ranking. TapResearch also reported approximately an eleven percent increase in brand favorability among viewers who saw the ad, according to blog.tapresearch.com. No major industry awards from bodies including Cannes Lions or the Effies are publicly documented for the campaign.
Tom Kuntz directed "Stuck In" for Pringles. The creative team at Grey New York was led by Chief Creative Officer Justine Armour and Executive Creative Director Peter Alsante. Kuntz is known for comedic advertising direction with precise visual construction, qualities that suited the campaign's escalating absurdist premise within a tight 30-second runtime.
Grey New York reported that "Stuck In" generated more than two billion impressions in the United States, more than doubling the reach of Pringles' previous Super Bowl campaign, according to Grey's own published figures. Pringles had also reached one billion dollars in United States sales with twelve percent growth ahead of the 2022 Super Bowl broadcast.
Pringles' four Super Bowl campaigns between 2018 and 2021 all centred on flavor stacking — combining multiple product flavors as the creative idea. "Stuck In" abandoned that platform entirely, shifting focus to product desirability through a humour-led premise rooted in the brand's distinctive cylindrical packaging, making the can itself central to the narrative for the first time.
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