So there’s a little-known spider called the Kidney Garden Spider, found mostly in Asia. But if you’ve ever seen the mascot for Pringles chips — a strange little bald guy’s head with beady eyes, eyebrows, and a massive, barbershop-quartet-style mustache — you might think the Kidney Garden Spider looks familiar. He looks uncannily like that cartoon chip mascot. (I didn’t know the disembodied head had a name, but Pringles calls him Mr. P.)
It’s just the joltingest thing, to see the real spider and the cartoon dude together. Pringles set up a petition urging people to support the renaming of this spider to the Pringles Spider. The company is calling on groups such as the International Society of Arachnology to officially change the little guy’s name.
Look at that mustache!
Pringles
Sure, it’s a promotional stunt, and sure, it seems unlikely that formal science organizations are going to change a perfectly good, if boring, spider name to promote a snack-food product.
But I just keep looking at the spider, and at the mascot, and it’s one of the eeriest things. Who, I wonder, was the person who alerted Pringles to this twinship? Was it someone who worked for them? Did they get a raise for finding this extraordinary coincidence? Or did some bored science student, studying the Kidney Garden Spider while also having themselves a snack, suddenly look from textbook to Pringles can and have an epiphany?
You can sign the petition or not. The company is promising to give away a limited number of free Pringles gifts if the name actually does get changed, which I doubt will happen. But even if it doesn’t happen, just look! That is one eerie match between nature and an advertising logo, and I, for one, am caught in its web of strangeness. Now, pass the Pringles.
