If you’ve seen a giant peanut heading down the highway in recent days, you haven’t gone nutty: The Planters NutMobile is driving through the Northeast on its annual tour of the country.
Students at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs were shellshocked Wednesday during a visit by a giant peanut on wheels.
Parked just in front of the Tisch Learning Center on the college’s green is a custom made 2017 Isuzu Box Truck with embroidered seats featuring Mr. Peanut and his signature top hat, monocle, and cane.
Kinley Ryan-Steele and her brother are out of breath from excitement.
“I don’t remember seeing the boot mobile but mom says we did,” said 11-year-old Ryan Steele. “And then we saw the peanut mobile, I mean the weiner mobile over the summer, and now were seeing the peanut mobile!”
Their mom Ashley Steele brought the pair of novelty-vehicle fanatics from Clifton Park after hearing about the visit last-minute.
“We had to, of course, come and see it. It's close enough. I pulled them out of school early. I'm like, ‘you can skip study hall, and you need to be there for your last class.’ We have to hit the trifecta. Life's all about choices, and I made a parenting choice today to see a NUTmobile,” said Steele.
“It was a good choice, mom,” said Ryan-Steele.
The NUTmobile is nothing without its partner pilots.
“I'm Ryan Connors. On the salty streets, they call me honey roasted Ryan.”
“Hi, I'm Katie Krupinski. And on the salty streets, they call me Macakatia.”
The two Planters Peanutters are recent college grads who were looking for a job that let them travel. They lucked into the year-long gig driving the 26-foot long, 13,000-pound peripatetic peanut across the country. They're about five months into promoting the Planters brand and looking to recruit the next generation.
“The favorite spot for me, though, is probably Bentonville, Arkansas. It's the home of Walmart. It's—being from New York. I had never gone to Arkansas, so it was cool to see Arkansas, and kind of have my thoughts change of what that looked like,” said Connors.
Krupinski, who’s been living in Texas for the past couple years, is giving a tour of the nut, which the Peanutters have named Marshell.
It’s got a cashew closet in the back, six seats, and a timeline of Mr. Peanut, full name Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe.
“He's a classy nut. I think the top hat, the cane and the monocle are always going to be a staple, Mr. Peanut. But as you can see here, sometimes, you know, they'll make him look a little bit more shell, like sometimes will make him a little bit bigger. It really just depends on what they're feeling,” said Krupinski.
A year-long roadtrip with one coworker could drive some people nuts, but Krupinski says she and Connors have a secret.
“Big thing is just communicating how we're feeling, because we spend every single day together and we didn't know each other five months ago. So and to have this job, you have to be a little bit nutty, you know. So, you know, we both are people that are very eccentric and have big personalities, so we just always try to do check-ins and communicate with each other, make sure that we're both feeling good, always feeling comfortable and safe, because we are traveling to places that we haven't been before, too,” said Krupinski.
Sophomore Ainsley Frost is one of the petrol peanut’s last visitors for the day.
“It's so rotund. It's, I don't know, just looking at it brings me a sort of joy that no other mobile can. I don't know. It's so texturized as well. It's really interesting to look at,” said Frost.
You can next cashew the NUTmobile at the New York Stock Exchange’s annual tree lighting ceremony.
And for those nuts enough, applications to be the next round of peanutters opens in the new year.
