Pringles Is Giving Away a Can-Shaped Urn for Halloween
Most Halloween brand promotions involve limited-edition flavors or spooky packaging. Leave it to Pringles to go straight to the afterlife.
The company launched a sweepstakes on October 13 called “Once You Drop” — a riff on its own “Once You Pop” tagline — offering one fan a custom precious-metal urn shaped like the iconic Pringles can, along with what it’s calling an “afterlifetime” supply of chips. The urn features a removable custom lid and personalized engraving. The 200-year chip supply is real, though Pringles isn’t actually shipping 200 years of chips — the winner receives $28,080 in cash to represent the value, intended to cover their lifetime and then some to pass on to whoever they choose.
The winner will be announced on October 31. Of course.
How to Enter
Visit OnceYouDrop.com before October 22 at 11:59 p.m. ET and sign a digital “will and taste-ament” pledging to be buried in a Pringles can. That’s the whole thing. One winner will be randomly selected and notified around Halloween.
The Real Story That Inspired It
The campaign isn’t just a marketing stunt cooked up from nowhere — it has a genuinely interesting origin. Fredric John Baur Jr., the chemist and food storage scientist who designed the Pringles can back in 1966 and received the patent in 1971, was so proud of his creation that he requested part of his ashes be buried in one when he died.
His children honored the request. When Baur passed away in May 2008, they stopped at a Walgreens on the way to the funeral home — reportedly at his children’s suggestion — and picked up a can of Original Pringles. Some of his ashes went into the can, which was then buried in Springfield Township, Ohio. The remaining ashes were divided between two urns, one buried alongside the can and one given to a grandchild.
The story made national news at the time and has become one of those genuinely strange, genuinely true footnotes in American consumer history. The Associated Press covered it. Time magazine wrote about it. And now, 18 years later, Pringles has decided it’s finally time to make the Fredric Baur tribute official with a proper urn upgrade.
The Urn Itself
The original Baur burial was done in a regular cardboard tube Pringles can — the standard product, pulled off a drugstore shelf. The urn Pringles is giving away is something considerably more elaborate: a precious-metal construction shaped like the familiar cylindrical container, with a custom removable lid and the winner’s name engraved on it. It maintains the unmistakable silhouette of the original can design that Baur patented more than 50 years ago, which should make for an interesting conversation piece on the mantel in the meantime.
Pringles teamed up with a funeral director known online as @DanTheFuneralMan for the campaign, lending it at least a veneer of professional credibility in the mortuary space.
Whether this represents the peak of snack brand marketing or a sign that something has gone deeply sideways in Halloween promotions is genuinely hard to say. But the Fredric Baur story is real, the urn is real, and the commitment to the bit is impressive. Once you drop, indeed.
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