Ryan Reynolds is voicing a panda in an effort to get people to ditch sugar for HighKey snacks. The Marvel star actually tweeted out a teaser earlier this week, but the full clip is out now on YouTube. (You can watch the full thing up top.) This Sugar Panda spot comes as part of a collaboration between Reynolds’ production company Maximum Effort and the HighKey brand. The snack maker prioritizes treats without added sugars. All of the company’s efforts allude to a Harvard study on what effects overconsumption of sugar can do to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates. Reynolds’ company had the idea to flip the idea of a cartoon mascot on its head with a panda that’s feeling the effects of too much sugar. It’s the kind of subversive silliness that the actor fully embraces throughout his career choices.
HighKey co-CEO Joe Ens gave his read of their mission statement, “We’re on a mission to help Americans cut sugar from their diet, but to pull it off, we need to disrupt the norm. There is not a more disruptive creative partner than Ryan Reynolds and Maximum Effort to help shake up the American diet.”
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Last year, Adweek talked to Reynolds about his approach to advertisements. The Deadpool actor gave some clear-eyed answers about how Maximum Effort makes decisions.
“We’re really risk-averse. So, people really think that we like to shoot from the hip, because we move so quickly and that sort of stuff,” he explained. “But, we really think this stuff through. We really find our guard rails. In the same way I write Deadpool. It’s like, ‘Okay, what is a person that’s hypersensitive to this type of material going to say?’ What’s the guy who just doesn’t give a **** about anything going to say? I want to find the middle where everyone feels sort of seen in that.”
“I’ve approached that with Aviation and everything else we’re working on,” Reynolds continued. “Working through that lens of empathy and that guides us in a weird way. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be subversive or super funny, and risky, or at least feel super risky. But, it definitely prevents you from stepping in the wrong direction. I say that knowing that I am just as susceptible to stepping in something that I didn’t mean to step in as anybody. There are mistakes.”
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