In 2019, the marketing department of Mars, Incorporated was going through a bit of a problem: coming off of the success and acclaim of their previous year's Super Bowl commercial for Skittles, they needed to find a way to top that. So, Skittles, being no stranger to avant-garde marketing campaigns, decided the best way to do this was instead of dumping millions of dollars into thirty seconds of Super Bowl airtime, they'd dump millions of dollars into a Broadway musical to be shown on the day of the big game. The result of this was the aptly-titled Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical, which debuted on February 3, 2019 at the Town Hall theatre.
The plot goes more or less like this: Michael C. Hall plays a fictionalized version of himself who stops at a convenience store a few hours before he performs in a Broadway musical for Skittlesnote , where he expresses doubt over it as he cannot understand why anyone would want to pay to see it. His spirits lift after eating a bag of Skittles, however, and declares that it'll be a big success. Unfortunately, it does not turn out as he expects, as the in-universe audience watching the in-universe musical begins to criticize his performance, the show, and the very nature of advertising itself. Things become even worse as the crowd gets angrier and dives deeper into existentialism, with tensions between them and Hall threatening to boil over. Oh, and Hall wears a cat costume during the entire thing.
In spite of the weirdness of it all (this is Skittles we're talking about, after all), Skittles managed to create a memorable marketing stunt that was one of the most successful advertising efforts of the 2019 Super Bowl. The actual musical was well-received by the people who paid tickets to see it, citing it as being a funny, absurd, and very metafictional look at the brand.
The original conceit was that the musical would be played live once on the day of Super Bowl LIII and only that day. Much of the information on this page was cobbled from the released cast album with all three songs that were performed
, its Wikipedia article, reviews from those who saw it, and a YouTube recording from two attendees who filmed excerpts of the show. However, a professionally filmed version was eventually posted on the website of Smuggler Entertainment, a production company that worked on the musical.
Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical contains these following tropes:
- Aesop Amnesia: Michael is won over by the audience's criticism of advertising in "Advertising Ruins Everything", declares that he'll never make an ad again and just stick to normal acting, only to then almost immediately start promoting Skittles again, much to the ensemble's annoyance.
- Affectionate Parody: The musical serves as an on-the-point and even scathing at times parody of Super Bowl advertising while simultaneously being a Super Bowl ad that promotes its product as much as possible, which it also gleefully pokes fun at.
- Bathos: The pathos of Michael's character arc is undercut by the fact that spends the entire show wearing a cat costume that makes him look as ridiculous as one would expect, though it's a testament to Michael C. Hall'snote performance that he still manages to make the character genuinely emotionally affecting and pitiable.
- Bittersweet Ending: Michael dies after the crowd descends into a riot, but his death has caused the show to sell "nearly" six hundred new packs of Skittles and has boosted revenue for the company, which everyone except for Michael seems to think has made the show a success.
- Both Sides Have a Point: In "Advertising Ruins Everything", both the audience and Michael voice valid points: the audience has every right to critique the musical and correctly notes that advertising is an invasive and annoying presence in their daily lives, while Michael points out that the musical is very clear that it is a commercial (even saying so in the title), and that he's just doing his job and shouldn't be blamed for something that's far beyond his scope as an actor.
- Brick Joke: One of the audience members repeatedly asks about the creation of high-speed rail system during the Town Hall segment when everyone else is focused on criticizing the show. In "This Definitely Was a Bad Idea", the ensemble mentions that a bill to fund a high-speed rail system was rejected.
- Metafiction: The conceit of the show is that it's about the very same musical, complete with in-universe audience members that initially show up in the actual audience to give the impression that they're legitimate audience members with genuine grievances. It only gets even more meta, and even more confusing, from there.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis: As the crowd begins to turn on Michael, one of the members angrily says that he loved Michael in The Crown, only to be told that he was never in that show.
- Rage Breaking Point: While the audience members was already plenty angry and going through an existential crisis after being informed that they're just actors in a commercial, it's not until the convenience store owner tries to get them to buy more Skittles packs that they truly snap and cause a riot.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: In "This Might Have Been a Bad Idea", Michael laments that starring in a Skittles musical might be a
Star-Derailing Role that'll completely serve as the end of his career. He is right in that musical does end up derailing his acting career, but in the wrong way: since he accidentally gets killed during the audience members' riot, it means that the musical serves as his final acting role. - Self-Deprecation: The musical's bread and butter, as it pokes fun at Skittles, Broadway musicals, and advertising itself. There's a song literally titled "Advertising Ruins Everything" that actually contains some valid criticism of the form, the musical is generally agreed to have been a bad idea, and the Mars, Incorporated corporation that owns Skittles is portrayed as valuing profit over the accidental death of an innocent man.
- Skewed Priorities: In "This Definitely Was a Bad Idea", everyone is more focused on the time they wasted by attending the musical and how it failed to make enough money instead of the fact that someone died because of it. Anytime Michael points out that he's dead falls on deaf ears, and they only start caring after his death leads to a boost in sales.
- Shout-Out:
- Michael mentions in "This Might Have Been a Bad Idea" that if his doubts are confirmed and the musical fails, he'll kill his agent, go on the run, and grow a beard so no one will recognize him—which is more or less what happened to his most famous role Dexter Morgan in the much-maligned series finale of his show.
- A bear randomly crawls onto the stage after Michael dies, a reference to the famous "exit, pursued by a bear" stage direction in The Winter's Tale.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Michael's agent Brian, who's only mentioned twice and never appears. He was the one who convinced Michael to star in a Skittles commercial, something that leads to his death.
- Take That!: The ending, in which Michael's death is celebrated as having meaning because it caused nearly six hundred packs of Skittles to get sold, is a jab at the "You Will Be Found" musical number from Dear Evan Hansen.
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?: The first half of "This Might Have Been a Bad Idea" is just Michael wondering who would ever pay to see a musical about Skittles and doubting that it'll succeed, having been roped into the project by his agent and fearing that it'll tank his career as an actor.
