Those humanish food-product mascots we grew up with are friendly—for a reason

Don’t be fooled by the Pillsbury Doughboy’s cutesy and soft appearance. He’s hiding a (pretty obvious) secret. Food mascots are engineered by marketers to appeal to your psychological and emotional senses, The Takeout reports. Companies rely on anthropomorphism, the interpretation of nonhuman things in terms of human characteristics, to grab customers’ dollars. It’s all about creating a connection, because, as writer Angela Pagán put it, “we relate to what we know best, which is ourselves.” Mascots may allow people to feel less conflicted about giving in to a certain craving, and they cause customers to open their wallets more than nonmascoted campaigns. Research seems to back these claims up, but we’d do well to take some of the studies with a grain of salt, specifically the ones generated by companies that have humanoids in their advertising. —Alex Hinton