H-E-B Super Bowl commercials tap into Texans’ love of tortillas: ‘If you know, you know’
If you know how good a warm H-E-B butter tortilla tastes, you know.
The San Antonio-based grocery store company aired a couple of commercials during Super Bowl LVII on Sunday night that served as a wink and a nod to Texans who have made the grocery brand iconic in the Lone Star state.
In one, a stern-faced TSA agent opens a guilty-looking traveler’s suitcase stuffed full of the store’s tortillas, as Trisha Yearwood’s song “How Do I Live Without You” plays in the background. (Note how a fictitious airline logo in the background looks suspiciously like Whataburger’s).
Any wayward Texan who has endured the great misfortune of moving away, and then during a return visit home loaded up on goodies, can relate to the traveler’s sheepish shrug to the security guard, who gives him a knowing nod and lets him pass.
Then we see a mother serving dinner and secretly slipping in those tortillas as her own, and a driver at a stoplight stealing a bite of tortilla as a couple of cops pull up alongside with gotcha looks — until they pull out their own tortillas and smile. “If you know, you know,” the commercial ends.
In the second ad, a woman driving slams on the brakes and instinctively throws her hand over the driver’s seat ... not to protect her child, but to save her H-E-B “Cookies Over Texas” ice cream.
Then we see a woman relaxing in the bathtub with rose petals and candles. What kind of candles? Why, it’s H-E-B butter tortilla-scented candles.
H-E-B just broke ground on a Mansfield grocery store, and construction is moving quickly on a store in Alliance in northern Fort Worth.
This story was originally published February 12, 2023 at 9:16 PM.
