Smith’s Chips saw the opportunity to invest money in reviving the brand’s 1980s mascot and turning it into its very own content creator, fit for the 21st century.

Rather than paying established influencers to help sell more chips, the brand allowed the Gobbledok to learn and grow as a creator. This long-term play meant the Gobbledok – just like any other fledgling creator getting their start – could experiment with different content to find and attract the brand’s younger demographic.

Smith’s Chips is a beloved 90-year old potato chip/crisp brand in Australia. It once dominated the snack market in the 80s and 90s with help from its out-of-this-world mascot, the Gobbledok – a 5-foot furry alien from the Potato Planet who’s obsessed with eating Smith’s “Chippies!”

But skip forward to today and Smith’s, once a pantry staple, was struggling to connect with today’s snack lovers, who were turning to other brands instead.

Our brief was to infiltrate TikTok and convince a newer, younger generation of snack lovers to eat Smith’s Chips.

Return of the Gobbledok saw Smith’s Chips buck the trend of throwing lots of money at social media influencers to convince our target audience to buy its chips/crisps. Instead, it revived its 1980s mascot, Gobbledok, to become the brand’s personal TikTok content creator.

Considering the Gobbledok had been retired for over 30 years, he quickly got to work creating content about settling back into today’s world and telling everyone about his obsession for “Chippies!”

But in order to attract the attention Smith’s Chips deserved, the Gobbledok had to do something more than just jump onto TikTok trends, it had to do something that would get Australians talking. And at the time, everyone was talking about spy balloons, so that’s what the Gobbledok built – a Spy Potato.

Back in the 1980s the Gobbledok became a recognisable mascot thanks to a number of television commercials. But in order to attract the attention of a younger generation of modern-day snackers, we had to forget about TV and go where our Gen Z demographic were now watching things – TikTok.

We revamped the Gobbledok to fit the 9:16 frame and gave him the tools to be a content creator for the Smith’s Chips TikTok page.

Gobbledok started to TikTok about fitting in as an alien on earth, the new “earth” technologies he discovered, and even taught people how to speak “Chippies!” But the one thing that stayed true in everything he did was his obsession for Smith’s Chippies.

This natural progression of his obsession for Chippies is what led him to his most daring act yet – launching his own Spy Potato when the world was talking about spy balloons.

The Return of the Gobbledok began with the release of 17 different TikToks showing the Gobbledok jumping on trends, making friends, and trying new technology, all in the pursuit of his favourite snack obsession “Chippies”.

Then the Gobbledok saw an opportunity to take his obsession for Smith’s Chips to new heights. When the world was talking about spy balloons, the Gobbledok joined the conversation.

On World Chip Day, the Gobbledok lifted off into the sky above Australia riding a spy balloon shaped like a potato, looking down at the world and all those eating Smith’s Chips. This not only got our target audience buzzing, but also all those who nostalgically remembered watching the Gobbledok in ads for Smith’s Chips back in the 80s and 90s.

5 points brand love uplift

980,000 minutes watched

2 x view-through benchmark (21% video completion rate)

Best performing post: 947,463 impressions (Spy Potato launch)

Total impressions: 25,900,000 + total reach: 14,280,000

The Gobbledok was a brand mascot created by Smith’s Chips back in the 1980s. His appearance in ads saw him become an Australian icon right through to the 1990s.

The mascot is a 5-foot furry alien from the planet Dok, which is a planet in space made out of potato. He landed on earth in order to discover the best potato chips in the universe. These chips/crisps he discovered were Smith’s Chips.

The Gobbledok could only ever say one word “Chippies!”, which became a catch phrase across Australia. The mascot was obsessed with Smith’s Chips and was often caught trying to steal them off people eating them.

After the 1990s, the Gobbledok was retired as the brand mascot.