MoonPie is rolling out a limited-edition 12-count box of classic chocolate MoonPies tied to the theatrical release of Jimmy, a biographical drama about actor and World War II veteran Jimmy Stewart. A portion of proceeds from the "Lasso the Moon" box will benefit the USO, which has partnered with Chattanooga Bakery to ship the snack cakes to deployed service members since World War II.
The commemorative packaging is available now at Food City, Ingles, and select grocery retailers nationwide, as well as direct-to-consumer via lassothemoonpie.com, while supplies last. MoonPie also makes a cameo appearance in the film itself, with director Aaron Burns noting that the brand's original WWII-era packaging was used to help recreate Stewart's wartime world on screen.
The Brand Tie-In
The box name references Stewart's iconic "lasso the moon" line from Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life — the first film Stewart made after returning from his deployment with the U.S. Army Air Corps. The biopic, directed by Burns and starring KJ Apa, tracks Stewart's arc from his Academy Award win for The Philadelphia Story through 20 combat missions over Europe and his post-war struggle with PTSD before the making of It's a Wonderful Life.
"We've been shipping MoonPies to service members overseas since World War II, so we jumped at the chance to partner with the makers of 'Jimmy' to honor our troops in this way," said Tory Johnston, vice president of sales and marketing at Chattanooga Bakery. "The 'Lasso the Moon' box honors our military, past and present, veterans and their families."
C-Store Shelf Relevance
For convenience operators, the launch is a textbook example of a branded snack-cake limited edition that can generate incremental impulse purchases at the register and in the packaged-snacks set. MoonPie's single-serve and multi-pack formats have long been a staple of the c-store snack category, and a cause-marketing overlay — USO donations, veteran-focused messaging ahead of Veterans Day and the holiday season — gives operators a low-effort community-goodwill story to tell at store level.
Chattanooga Bakery, a fifth-generation, family-owned operation founded in 1902, also works with Friends of the Troops and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to distribute MoonPies to active-duty personnel on domestic and overseas bases year-round. That existing military-distribution footprint gives the "Lasso the Moon" campaign built-in credibility with the veteran consumer segment — a demographic that over-indexes for c-store visits, according to NACS operator research.
The timing — a November release ahead of the holiday shopping window — positions the 12-count box as both a gifting item and a food-service impulse add-on for operators running loyalty promotions or bundled snack-and-beverage offers through the winter months.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
