Yes, that Pirate’s Booty rebrand is real

FastCompany: Pirate’s Booty, the corn puff snack that’s been a ubiquitous part of American kids’ diets for decades, just got a rebrand that’s making some fans do a double take in grocery store aisles. The overhauled packaging features a new color palette, simplified text, an entirely different wordmark, and a pirate who’s gotten a fairly significant facelift. The work was spearheaded by the creative agency Pearlfisher, fresh off rebranding SkinnyPop—which, alongside Pirate’s Booty, is a subsidiary of The Hershey Co. The new branding started rolling out on store shelves earlier this month and will appear nationwide within the next week.

Inside the bag, the actual Pirate’s Booty recipe has been tweaked alongside the branding to include an extra dose of cheese. According to Eric Bowers, vice president of marketing for Hershey’s Salty Snacks division, these changes come as Pirate’s Booty is getting its first major marketing investment push from Hershey in several years—which means new partnerships, product innovations, and activations in real life and on social media.

To introduce a new generation of Gen Alpha customers to the brand, Bowers worked with Pearlfisher to unshackle the pirate (Captain Bob) and his trusty parrot sidekick (Crunchy) from the constraints of the previous branding to serve as more flexible, socials-ready mascots for the snack. The OG “healthy” snack Pirate’s Booty initially hit the high seas in 1987, when entrepreneur Robert Ehrlich created it as a healthier alternative (made with real cheddar!) to the kids’ snacks on the market.

The brand was acquired by Hershey in 2018, and although it’s a processed food, cheddar cheese is still the fourth ingredient on a relatively short nutrition label, which also includes no artificial flavors. In today’s snacking climate, those two attributes are a built-in brand advantage. Driven by the rise in wellness culture and a federal push against artificial dyes , some of the world’s biggest brands—including PepsiCo , Welch’s , and Kraft Heinz —are racing to reformulate their popular snacks with fewer additives and invent entirely new health-conscious options .

Within just the past few months, both Lay’s and Tostitos have launched their own rebrands to emphasize real ingredients such as potatoes, corn, and lime on their packaging. Given those macro trends, Bowers says now is the “most opportune time” for Pirate’s Booty to reassert itself as a better-for-you option in the chip aisle, and that meant catching both kids’ and parents’ eyes with an entirely new look. [Photo: Pirate’s Booty] Inside Pirate’s Booty’s new look For kids who grew up in the ’90s and early aughts, the most jarring change to the Pirate’s Booty packaging will undoubtedly be the new Captain Bob.

Rather than sitting inside a roundel on the front of the pack, Captain Bob is now bursting out of it, rope in one hand and a corn puff brandished in the other. His facial features have been given a bit of a rogue-ish glow-up, including a bushier mustache and chiseled jaw. In all, he looks more like an animated hero than the scrappy hand-drawn Captain Bob on the old packaging. His sidekick, Crunch, has been given a similar treatment.

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The rebranding of a well-known snack brand like Pirate's Booty is significant for the industry, particularly as it targets a new generation and aligns with health trends, making it relevant for brand strategy professionals.