PerkWeird Promotions
Pringles Offered a Cremation Urn and 200 Years of Chips
The prize was an urn shaped like a Pringles can, plus the cash value of one can of chips per week for two centuries. The story behind the promotion is even stranger.
A chips company giving away a year’s supply of snacks would be unremarkable. Pringles decided that 100 years was not enough, doubled it to 200 and added a custom cremation urn shaped like its packaging.
That was the premise of Once You Drop, a Halloween 2026 sweepstakes. One eligible entrant could win a bespoke Pringles-can-shaped urn, plus US$28,080 in cash. The marketing called the money an “afterlifetime” supply of chips.
The promotion was real. So was the can-shaped urn. It was also US-only, and entries are now closed. Canadians could read about the stunt but could not enter it.
Two centuries of chips, paid in cash
The official rules explain the arithmetic: 52 cans a year, multiplied by 200 years, at US$2.70 a can. The result is US$28,080.
No warehouse full of chips was involved. The snack portion of the prize would be paid in cash. The bespoke urn had an approximate retail value of US$500, bringing the total stated grand-prize value to US$28,580.
Entry ran from October 13 to October 22, 2026. Eligible participants had to be legal residents of the 50 US states or Washington, DC, aged 18 or older. No purchase was necessary.
The online application included a mock last will called a “Will and Taste-ament”, which invited fans to pledge to be buried in a Pringles can. That sounds like a fairly expensive commitment to a snack brand, but the official terms expressly say the document was for entertainment only and not legally binding.
A bizarre idea with a real origin
The stunt borrowed a detail from the brand’s own history.
Fredric Baur, the designer of the original Pringles can, reportedly wanted some of his ashes placed inside one after his death. His family honoured that wish in 2008. The company used that story as the inspiration for its Halloween promotion, according to industry coverage of the campaign.
A distinctive piece of packaging had become a piece of funeral memorabilia. It was strange enough to be memorable without inventing a completely unrelated gimmick.
The campaign even featured a real funeral director in its promotion. A brand that normally talks about crunchy snacks had managed to turn its cylindrical can into the centre of a conversation about the afterlife.
Why this one belongs in the strange-promotion archive
The giveaway has ended, so there is no active offer to chase. Its lasting interest is in the marketing idea: take an authentic, eccentric anecdote about a product’s inventor, connect it to Halloween and give the prize an almost absurd numerical value.
Pringles did not need to ship 10,400 cans of chips to make people discuss the stunt. It just needed a can with a very different purpose.
For the original dates, eligibility and prize conditions, see the official sweepstakes rules. They are a historical record, not an invitation to enter.