We Can Never Sleep Again After These Nightmare Nutter Butter Ads

Halloween might be over, but we’re still spooked — and it’s all thanks to a cookie.

Videos by Sporked

Yes, a cookie has us shaking in our boots. Specifically, it’s Nutter Butter, the unassuming peanut buttery cookie. And it’s all thanks to a viral ad campaign launched by the brand, which is spooking everyone who encounters its ads on social media. Here’s why the absolutely unhinged approach to making Nutter Butter more popular is keeping us up at night.

Nutter Butter Cookies Aren’t for the Faint of Heart, Apparently

If you’ve never taken a few minutes to check out what Nutter Butter posts on social media, boy do we have a surprise for you. We discovered it ourselves on the cookie brand’s Facebook — but if you really want to be awake at night thinking about whether or not Nutter Butter is hiding in your closet ready to exact some kind of horror, you’ll want to see the Instagram account, too.

All of Nutter Butter’s social media pages are downright weird, and when you dig through and start watching videos or looking at photos, you’ll find yourself in something of a horrifying fever dream. Yes, the simple sandwich cookie makes appearances. But most of the content is creepy and absurdist.

The posts star a villain who’s aptly named the Nutter Butter Man, and each one is creepier than the last. There’s some kind of lore behind him, but we aren’t quite sure what it is. Some posts have slight humor and are a little reminiscent of those old and very weird Quizno’s ads (you know the ones); others are designed for a jump scare.

What’s in store when you happen across these frightening videos (or seek them out, if you’re brave)? Well, they’re kind of reminiscent of The Ring and its life-ending VHS tape. There are a lot of flashes of odd images meant to scare you, and the pacing will get your heart racing. Throughout them, human faces are obscured, replaced, or digitally grafted with the iconic peanut butter cookies and eerie eyes.

Nutter Butter has even created some shorts a la internet creepypastas, inspired by unsettling videos that have gone viral. And yes, there are some storylines; some, for example, follow a character named Aiden who goes mad after eating Nutter Butter cookies.

When Did Nutter Butter Ads Get So Weird?

While we’ve only spotted Nutter Butter’s uber-creepy and totally terrifying ads recently, they’ve actually been around longer than you might expect. In fact, Nutter Butter first started getting weird with its advertising campaign back in 2024.

The evil-seeming Nutter Butter Man first appeared roughly two years ago, though online chatter suggests he could date all the way back to 2022. But he didn’t exactly catch on in those early years — I mean, when was the last time you spotted a Nutter Butter ad in the wild? Now, however, increasingly more people have discovered him and the ads he stars in. 

Nutter Butter’s advertising approach feels hallucinogenic and downright creepy, but it’s clearly effective. Their horrifying videos have been going viral, and the company currently has nearly 3 million followers on TikTok. So, while we’re far too scared to keep following their accounts, the approach is working. Maybe Gen Z and Gen Alpha are down for being frightened into finding their new favorite snacks.