Pringles vs. Donkey Kong

Overview

Pringles vs. Donkey Kong refers to a decentralized Twitter raid participants of which reply bombed chips brand Pringles with an image of Donkey Kong from Super Smash Bros. 4. Ignited by a ratio attack on a Pringles' tweet in October 2020, the reply bombing ultimately led to Pringles posting an image of a gorilla with a can of chips in December 2020.

Background

On October 15th, 2020, Pringles' official Twitter account @Pringles posted a now-deleted tweet about custom Pringles app icon pack. On the same day, an Twitter user @rat_food quote retweeted^[1] the post, writing "raito'd by donkey kong smash 4 render" and attaching a render of Donkey Kong model from Super Smash Bros. 4. After the tweet outratioed @Pringles' post (video shown below), Pringles deleted the original tweet, replacing it with an identical tweet.^[11]

Also on the same day, @rat_food made another tweet^[1] in which they called for reply bombing @Pringles' posts with the image (tweet no longer available). On October 16th, @rat_food posted^[2] a video documenting the bombing (shown below). The video received over 430 retweets and 1,500 likes in two months.

Developments

Starting on October 16th, 2020, Twitter^[3][4][5] users posted the image in replies to @Pringles' tweets and DM'd it to the account (examples shown below).

In the following months, posting this and other images of Donkey Kong continued daily, with @Pringles blocking^[6][7] a number of participating users.

On December 16th, @Pringles^[8] posted a photograph of a gorilla with a Pringles can to appease the reply bombers, writing, "You asked us to post a certain image of a certain gorilla to our feed. So here’s what we can legally do," (post shown below). The post received over 100 retweets and 560 likes in one day.

Online Reactions

Between October 16th and December 16th, a number of Twitter users unaware of the reply bombing inquired about the image. Several renowned content creators including Stickfab^[9] and Playtronic^[10] participated in the raids.

Search Interest

External References