Halo Top Is 'Ice Cream for Adults,' and So Are Its Hilariously Bleak New TV Commercials

Halo Top has a pretty twisted sense of humor.

We learned this in 2017 when the low-calorie ice cream brand rolled out a seriously twisted online commercial, “Eat the Ice Cream,” where an older woman was kidnapped by robots who killed her loved ones and forced to consume ice cream against her will. 

Now, Halo Top is bringing its dark side to television. Its first TV ads ever, by 72andSunny New York, are built around a fun insight—that it’s not kids but grownups who really need ice cream, to assuage the indignities of modern adult life as well as the terrors of mortality. 

Sound harsh? The darkly comic message is delivered with deadpan comic skill by Halo Top’s ice cream man in a series of four spots, directed by Tim Godsall of Anonymous Content. 

The campaign breaks Tuesday night on The Bachelor. One spot features Nick Viall, who starred as the Bachelor after finishing second in two consecutive seasons of The Bachelorette. He hasn’t been very lucky in love—which helps introduce the Halo Top premise. 

Three other commercials explore other travails of the adult experience—mortgages, online dating and terrible jobs. 

“We created Halo Top to be able to eat ice cream as much as we wanted and I believe everyone can relate to the need for ice cream after a rough day,” Justin Woolverton, CEO and founder of Halo Top, said in a statement. “We’re excited to bring this concept to life and feel like it’s a great way to demonstrate that Halo Top is exactly what adults have been waiting for—delicious ice cream with around 300 calories per pint.” 

Woolverton himself has been a driver behind the brand’s offbeat approach to advertising. He was a fan of Mike Diva, the Lord Danger creative director/director who conceived “Eat the Ice Cream.” Woolverton told Diva that Halo Top had enough commercials that explain why Halo Top is awesome—and that he wanted something that would grab people’s attention. It worked—as the spot got almost 1 million views on YouTube alone. 

See “Eat the Ice Cream” below.