People Have Mixed Feeling About Matthew McConaughey's Doritos Commercial

In order to herald the return of a much-missed '90s snack product, Doritos turned Matthew McConaughey into a character inspired by a cute-but-creepy 1960s children's book. While Flat Stanley, the story of a little boy who gets flattened by a bulletin board (via Amazon) has served as the basis of many an literary and geography lesson over the past few decades (the Flat Stanley Project has turned the character into a kind of educational version of the Roaming Gnome), casting a well-known actor in the squished hero role grossed out more than a few people.

Flat Matthew, McConaughey's new 2D character, has adventures including being sucked up by a Roomba and being nearly blown away by the wind while walking his dog (via YouTube), all to the tune of Queen's "I Want to Break Free." He finally finds salvation from his two-dimensional state when he sees a vending machine full of the new Doritos 3D reboot. Evidently not having any change in his pocket, Flat Matt slides right into the machine, grabs a bag, eats a chip, and regains his proper dimensions — unfortunately, he's still inside the machine at the time. We're not entirely sure just what reaction Doritos were going for here ... and neither, it seems, does Twitter.

A few Twitter users were pretty freaked out by the #FlatMatthew ad. One commented, "Creepy. Just. Creepy." Another said McConaughey "looked like a flattened Judge Doom. It was horrifying." Another said it was "a true nightmare. I feel like I've just watched the video tape from The Ring and am going to be haunted until flat Matthew shows up to murder me in my bed."

Others, however, seemed to find #FlatMatthew hilarious. One Twitter user said "I stan #FlatMatthew," while quite a few others ranked the commercial either at the top or as one of the favorite commercials of the first half. 

Still others were on the fence as to just which commercial was the most out there, with one tweet asking "Sweatshirt Jason Alexander – more or less disturbing than Flat Matthew McConaughey?" (The consensus seemed to be that the Jason Alexander commercial was slightly more terrifying.) 

Grade-school teachers did not seem to have an opinion on the subject, but who knows? Flat Matthew could turn out to be quite educational -– at the very least, as a cautionary tale of vending machine safety.