The Latest Wonderful Pistachios Personality Is...Stephen Colbert?!

The Super Bowl is nearly upon us, which means it's time for Wonderful Pistachios to name its newest commercial spokesperson. Though one of its most recent ads stars the likes of the Prancercise lady, for Super Bowl XLVII the company unloosed its pursestrings to hire someone who was both internet-famous and a legitimate performing artist: Psy, the man behind "Gangnam Style." Any grade-schooler with a basic understanding of pattern recognition would assume that this year's WP spokesperson would, therefore, be Ylvis, the artists who brought us "What Does The Fox Say." But it's not! IT'S STEPHEN COLBERT!

WP made the announcement today: Colbert will star in two Super Bowl spots for WP, which will launch a "full-year agreement" between Colbert and the company, and will eventually also including "a series of several spots throughout 2014 highlighting the 'Get Crackin', America' rallying cry" that Colbert will (supposedly) participate in developing along with WP's "in-house creative agency." The press release also reminds us of some of Colbert's achievements, including Emmy wins, and completely skipping over his Grammys and Peabody and the spiders and ice creams and outer-space treadmills that have been named for him.

You don't have to be a close follower of the Wonderful Pistachios brand to know what a huge departure this is. Up to this point, WP ads have showcased people on a spectrum ranging from media curiosities (Levi Johnston) to weirdos still clinging to fame (Dennis Rodman) to viral stars (Keyboard Cat). Prior to Colbert, the most respectable WP commercial stars were the Harlem Globetrotters.

And even though I like to think of myself as media-savvy and impervious to advertising messages, I can't lie: the news that Colbert is on board with Wonderful Pistachios has kind of made me rethink the brand and the product. Before, WP was a company that exploited idiots who wanted to be famous and didn't care how, just a few months away from a "Courtney Stodden does it with an antique nutcracker" or "Farrah Abraham does it with an incredibly lifelike model of her genitals." But Stephen Colbert has interviewed Presidents and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for wounded veterans: he's both a luminary in his field and an actually good person. I don't really give a shit if Snooki likes them, but when Stephen Colbert cracks (get it), "Since I was a child, I've dreamed of working with America's premier nut company....The fact that it turns out to be the good folks at Wonderful Pistachios is just the pistachio on top of the ice cream sundae," my response is, "Wow, I've never put pistachios on a sundae but that sounds pretty awesome!"

So the good news is that there's one less outlet for fame whores to extend their time in the public eye, at least until VH1 greenlights a Couples Therapy spinoff starring veterans of past seasons of Couples Therapy. And the better news for Wonderful Pistachios is that distancing itself from the kind of human garbage that formerly populated its ads might make me actually buy some pistachios from them someday without worrying that the price of a bag is going to find its way to Heidi and Spencer.