How GUT Is Reviving an Entire Category with Jet-Puffed’s Adorable Masochistic Marshmallows

Despite being the marshmallow category leader, producing more than half of all marshmallows sold in the US, Jet-Puffed had never launched a creative platform in its nearly 70-year history.

Last week, that all changed when the Kraft Heinz brand and creative agency GUT introduced ‘Love ‘Em to Death’, a darkly humorous platform skewered by the insight that marshmallows are made to suffer, for the pleasure of others.

“It started as an insight from the product experience itself,” says Ricardo Casal, CCO at the office which led the new creative, GUT Miami. “When the team pointed out that Jet-Puffed marshmallows are constantly getting tortured, we couldn’t unsee it.”

“Marshmallows look sweet and cheerful, but they exist to be stretched, squished, melted, burned, and to joyfully suffer for your enjoyment,” adds Jess Vultaggio, creative, capabilities and innovation VP for North America at Kraft Heinz. “By embracing that unexpected honesty, we are re-introducing the brand’s iconic charm in a bold and playful way that modernises the brand, reconnects us with long-time fans, and resonates with new generations in a way that feels culturally relevant and fun.”

Balancing this sadistic sense of humour with the existing ‘sweetness’ of the brand’s world was a challenge at first. “But it was a really fun creative exploration,” Ricardo explains, “and we believe we landed on the right balance between a marshmallow’s innate joy and its painful destiny. It’s a platform that we believe both kids and parents will enjoy.”

In an effort to gain younger buyers while taking marshmallows out of their comfort zone, GUT created a cast of marshmallow characters designed around how the treats meet their demise: ‘Burnie’ is on fire, ‘Duncan’ has been dunked, ‘Pierce’ has been pierced, ‘Slash’ cut in half, and so on.

​The launch video shows the characters being roasted, squished, melted, and otherwise joyfully sacrificed for our enjoyment – and all with a smile on their faces. “The cuteness and tenderness of the world worked perfectly to contrast with the dark and raw reality of what real Jet-Puffed marshmallows have to go through every day,” says Ricardo. “Evolving the storylines for those familiar visuals and creating an entire world with characters and their experience was an incredible journey.”

The new platform was teased back in October via a Las Vegas Sphere takeover for ‘Sphere of Fear’ week four, which made use of the marshmallow characters’ squishy form. Beyond the benefits for Jet-Puffed, this was a milestone for the Kraft Heinz family as a whole, being the first brand from the portfolio to leverage the innovative media space.

“As we thought about how to announce a fresh chapter for an iconic brand, we wanted a moment that felt impossible to ignore and unmistakably modern,” says Jess. “The Sphere is a canvas built for bold visual storytelling which made it a natural fit for ‘Love ’Em to Death’. The idea itself lives in visual contrast: adorable, smiling marshmallow characters meeting their joyful demise. The Sphere let us bring that tension to life in a way that matched the scale of our ambition: playful, larger-than-life and rooted in spectacle.”

Jess adds that, for years, marshmallows had been treated as a background ingredient – “familiar, functional and seasonal with limited innovation and little storytelling”. In fact, the brand’s research discovered that 50% of people surveyed couldn’t even name a marshmallow brand.

“Marshmallows are showing up in more moments than ever, from viral social recipes and ‘hacks’ to elevated desserts and everyday snacking. Jet-Puffed has been at the centre of those moments, but when more than half of people can’t name a marshmallow brand, it’s a clear sign the category is way too quiet.”

So Jet-Puffed’s first-ever creative platform is more than just a new set of creative tools to deploy throughout 2026 and beyond. It’s an opportunity to make some real noise in a long-dormant space. And with its charming new characters, and darker tone of voice, Jet-Puffed is tapping into all generations within families to reconnect with the playful, chaotic way people interact with marshmallows, hoping to renew some of the category’s emotional energy.