Who Is Dr. Umstick? Eric Andre's Weird Ice Cream Commercial, Explained
During the Super Bowl LVIII broadcast, prepackaged ice cream treat brand Drumstick debuted a commercial starring Eric Andre of "The Eric Andre Show" fame. Andre plays a passenger on a plane experiencing some sort of vague medical emergency. Interrupting an actual doctor initially willing to help him is a small plastic doll of a man. His name is Dr. Umstick, recontextualizing the spelling of the ice cream treat brand's name. Dr. Umstick helps not by treating Andre but by providing everyone on the plane with their own Drumstick ice cream cone.
This Super Bowl commercial is not actually the first Drumstick ad to feature Dr. Umstick. The character debuted, rather, in a campaign from 2022 that kicked off with a five-minute video titled "Another Day, Another Drumstick." In addition to introducing Dr. Umstick, this spot casts him as the star of a film noir-inspired mystery of sorts. He then returned in a series of shorts, in each of which a Dr. Umstick-sized Drumstick cone is his romantic partner. Drumstick's Super Bowl ad does away with this weirder aspect of his character and instead plays up the part of his name that suggests he's a doctor (he's not).
Dr. Umstick stands for adventure, according to his creators
The ad agency behind Drumstick's bizarre mascot is called Öpinionated. They produced both the initial series of ads and the popular ice cream brand's first Super Bowl commercial. After the character debuted, marketing blog Muse by Clio interviewed Öpinionated's Lauren Olson and Nate Corrado about how they came up with the wacky ad campaign and what it was like to bring their idea to fruition.
"Everything we wrote and designed was very intentionally built to ladder up to our concept that eating a Drumstick is like taking an adventure. Frequently the humor comes from the human and grounded vulnerability Dr. Umstick exudes in his expression of genuine love," Olson and Corrado said, attempting to explain with logic why they decided a human doll would fall in love with an ice cream cone. "Plus, it's Drumstick. It would be a shame to not do something delightful with such a fun brand."
For what it's worth, Öpinionated's gamble on this unusual idea paid off. According to Olson and Corrado, Drumstick was immediately receptive to the Dr. Umstick character, and obviously liked him enough to bring him back for a big-time Super Bowl commercial with Eric Andre.