Featured image for JIF Peanut Butter Enters the “Gif” Debate With Special Jars

JIF Peanut Butter Enters the “Gif” Debate With Special Jars

by Rudy Sanchez on 02/26/2020 | 2 Minute Read

Few internet debates have endured unresolved, with passionate adherents on both sides. These aren’t issues with a significant impact on our lives, like climate change, but rather topics that engender inflammatory discussion among netizens, perhaps because they’re such low stakes, like whether pineapple is a valid pizza ingredient, or if fizzy soft drinks are called soda or pop. Animated picture files, usually rendered in Graphics Interface Format, or GIF, rule the web, but how to pronounce the acronym has long been disputed. 

Now, peanut butter maker JIF is making their position clear via specially designed jars.

Editorial photograph

Partnering with GIPHY, the online database and search engine for animated images, they announced Jif’s new packaging ahead of National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day, March 1st. With two designs, the jars feature the same colorful striped pattern on the labels, but one is marked “Gif” and the other “JIF.” 

The Gif version sports a call-out indicating that it is pronounced with a hard G, and is described as “animated lopping images,” although it’s really just some peanut butter. The JIF version has a similar call-out, directing consumers to pronounce the smooth and creamy spread with a soft G. The red tops carry a conciliatory yet definitive message, “If you’ve ever called a Gif a ‘Jif,’ we forgive you.”

Editorial photograph

“We're teaming up with GIPHY to put a lid on this decade-long debate and prove there is only one JIF…it's creamy, delicious peanut butter, not a looping picture you can send to make friends and family laugh," said Rebecca Scheidler, Vice President of JIF Marketing, via a press release.

JIF made the new jars available on Amazon, but don’t bother firing up your Prime subscription, as they've already sold out.