People Are Actually Mad That Hershey's Changed Its Holiday Commercial
After 31 years, Hershey’s has made some changes to its classic holiday ad, and viewers are not pleased
There are some things about the holidays that you just expect each year: Family traditions, warm feelings of comfort and joy, and heartwarming holiday ads, like that Hershey’s commercial where the kisses are little CGI bells that play a cheery rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” But this year, of all years, we should know that all good things come to an end. The candy giant just revamped that commercial for the first time in a whopping 31 years, and to say viewers are upset might be a little bit of an understatement.
The new commercial starts out on a familiar note (pun intended). The little Hershey’s kisses take the screen in their Christmas-tree-esque formation and sound out the first few bars of their familiar tune. Only this time, before they get even halfway through the song, a little hand reaches in from offscreen and plucks one of the kisses away. And then we cut to a nice-looking family heartlessly murdering those poor little bells—I mean, making Christmas cookies, though from the way people are reacting, you’d think they were actually doing a festive holiday murder onscreen.
In the comments under the YouTube version of the new commercial, people are letting their feelings about the big Hershey’s shakeup fly.
“You took something great and crapped all over it, you couldn’t have just kept the original and made a separate commercial?” one viewer wrote. Another added, “The perfect representation of 2020: completely ruined!”
Soon, because this is the internet, the criticism boiled over onto social media, where people continued to act as if Hershey’s had personally and systematically stomped all over their beloved Christmas traditions, not just put out a new commercial for the first time in a few decades.
The backlash grew so swiftly that Hershey’s actually released a statement addressing it.
“We made the decision to make a slight update to the original that kept the opening holiday melodies and incorporated another holiday tradition, baking — melding together these two time-honored traditions,” the company wrote. “From playing the bells to baking peanut butter blossoms, it’s Hershey’s Kisses that have stood the test of time.”
The statement continued, “For viewers who love the original version — don’t worry, it hasn’t gone away for forever. Our hope this season is that our updated version not only harkens back memories of the original Kisses bells tune but also brings the genuine feeling of heartwarming to life with images of holiday baking between a father and daughter.”
You know, I’m normally a live-and-let-live kind of a person. I’m not usually here to tell people they’re overreacting when they get upset about something. But fam, take a breath. It is a commercial for chocolate, which is still widely available to watch on the internet, even if it won’t play on your TV this year. Here: I found it for you.
Change is scary and hard. But if you’re currently in a blind rage about a Hershey’s commercial, might I suggest watching the original ad a few times on YouTube, and then redirecting that rage toward something worth getting angry about. There are plenty to choose from this year.
