Everyone’s favorite ’90s after-school snack is looking for relevance again with a tried-and-true spokesperson: Tony Hawk.
The skateboarding champ was a mainstay of Bagel Bites’ advertising in the early aughts, a time when “gluten-free” and “organic” weren’t yet staples in the parental lexicon. Oh, the good old days.
Now he’s back shilling for the Kraft Heinz brand, except this time he wants to set the record straight: no, he’s not a “sellout” for endorsing Bagel Bites, even though he was deemed one back in the Y2K days when he first started promoting the bite-size snacks (and was subsequently given the biting nickname “Bagel Boy” by disgruntled fans).
Before you ask, Hawk’s own agency D/CAL made these ads.
His latest appearance for the brand comes in the form of a bizarre, SNL-esque video where he rehashes the sellout “scandal” during an interview with a bored news anchor. The brand is now trying to target millennial dads, who may be the last demographic to willingly buy these preservative-laden pizza bombs for their kin (that, or stoned teenagers. Take your pick).
In defense of Bagel Bites, it does seem as though Hawk—who, puzzlingly, seems to look more and more like Bill Gates as he gets older—has taken the sellout comment to heart over the years. In 2016, he defended his love of Bagel Bites on his Facebook page by claiming that he really ate them at the time he started appearing in the brand’s ads, and still does “on occasion” (whatever you say, Tony).
Anyhoo … another video, just in time for Father’s Day, promotes what the brand is calling the #RadDadSquad, which is a group of—you guessed it!—rad dads, led by Hawk himself. Here’s to hoping some poor nostalgic sap out there will use the hashtag #RadDadSquad so his family can win the chance to spend some quality time with the one and only Bagel Boy.
This dude and Alex Bogusky really need to hang out.