Hangry Kids Get Revenge in Darkly Funny Ads for Wonderful Halos

The kids aren’t just hangry in a new campaign for Wonderful Halos, they’re downright vengeful and borderline homicidal.

That’s because their parents polished off all the sweet-as-candy mandarin oranges in the house, leaving them with low blood sugar and lax supervision.

Two hilariously dark ads—from The Wonderful Agency, the company’s in-house creative division—set up a scenario in which caretakers thoughtlessly deprive kids of Halos, half-heartedly apologize and then neglect to watch their backs.

The wronged youngsters get inventive: one boy slashes the brake lines on his father’s car, while a girl snitches to the IRS about her mom’s sketchy record-keeping.

“We wanted to create an emotional connection and have people understand the brand,” Jennifer Hirano, vice president of marketing at The Wonderful Company, told Adweek. “We thought this approach would appeal to parents and be playful and fun.”

The work—marking the first TV advertising for the brand in seven years and its first significant promo push in five years—launches as Halos has amped its national distribution and expanded its growing season. The fruit, once sold only seasonally between November and May, is now stocked in groceries, club stores and other retailers year-round.

“We felt like this was the right time to invest in a bigger campaign,” Hirano said, “because we have more availability across America.”

As a category, mandarin oranges have become the best-selling citrus fruit in the U.S., surpassing oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes, tangelos and tangerines. The segment accounted for $1.9 billion in sales in 2023, a 4% bump year over year, per Circana. Competitors to Wonderful, a sales leader, run the range from private label to legacy brands like Cuties, Dole and Sunkist. 

A return to twisted form

“Hands Off My Halos” is a return to off-beat advertising for the brand, which dropped a memorable series called “Good Choice, Kid” starting in 2016. More recent marketing has been less a storytelling vehicle and more a product demo.

The creative concept for “Hands Off My Halos” is grounded in a consumer insight, with research showing six out of 10 mothers of young children say they’ve been criticized about their parenting, with more than half of the disapproval centered on what they feed their kids, per the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.

“There’s so much pressure, with parents feeling judged and kind of overwhelmed by all the choices and decisions they have to make everyday,” Hirano said. “The insight spoke to us.”

The media buy around “Hands Off My Halos,” which is expected to run in various iterations through 2025, includes linear and connected TV, out-of-home, digital and social. The brand has tripled its TikTok spending, using a googly-eyed mascot named Hal to latch onto Gen Z with pop culture-driven posts.

In addition to the two spots, Wonderful plans pop-ups and other activations around the country, brand partnerships, and in-store displays and sampling.