Oreo Wins Snack Madness

One month ago we created Snack Madness – a 64 snack tournament with Cookie, Cracker, Potato Chip and Misc. Snack brackets. This tournament was a follow-up to our popular Meat Madness and Fast Food Bracket tournaments in ’09 and ’10. 30,000 total votes later a Snack Madness winner was crowned: Oreo. See the results of the final vote HERE. Congrats to Oreo for earning the title of greatest snack in existence. Also, congrats to popchips, the plucky #12 seed who advanced far beyond expectations to reach the finals, as well as Cheez-Its, winner of the Cracker Bracket, and Doritos, winner of the Misc. Snacks bracket.
Click on the bracket below to enlarge it and see all 64 snack contenders and how they fared, including the percentage of the vote won in each and every match-up.

Unlike last year’s Fast Food Bracket, which was full of upsets and saw several #1 seeds lose early, Snack Madness featured fewer surprises and upsets. While Oreo may have been the only #1 seed to make the final four, the early rounds went as expected. In 2 of the 4 brackets the Sweet Sixteen featured the 1-4 seeds, and no #1 seed lost prior to that. The biggest upsets of the tournament were perpetrated by popchips, who took its cinderella run all the way to the final vote. Starting out as a #12 seed, popchips flexed it’s social media and fan loyalty muscle by rallying it’s supporters to get out the vote. Others tried to counter this – Pringles, with it’s 11 million Facebook fans posted a link asking its fans to vote for them over popchips – but popchips still beat them. Ditto with Kettle chips and Doritos, both of whom attempted to motivate fans through social media but fell short of generating enough passion or enthusiasm to stop the popchips momentum. popchips almost ran the table, but ultimately the massive fan base of Oreo was too much for it to overcome.

Taking a look at the bracket above, what are the match-ups or results that surprise you the most in retrospect? Who should have gone further than they did? What snack missed an opportunity to rally its fans and gain more exposure for its brand? What was the biggest upset? The least suprising blowout?