On January 31, 1999, Sailor Jack and Bingo were seen by millions all over the world in a Cracker Jack commercial during Super Bowl XXXIII. The thirty-second commercial was the first one shown between the 1st and 2nd quarters of the football game. The ad can be viewed now at the Ad Critic web site; a search for Cracker Jack will lead to "That's a Really Big Bag."

In an Advertising Age article reviewing the Super Bowl commercials ( 2/1/99 ), the Cracker Jack spot was at the top of the list of commercials receiving 3 1/2 stars, the highest rating awarded.

The commercial's clever story line involves the testing of a "really, really big bag" of Cracker Jack. In one scene, a lady is accidentally wiping out the top shelf of a grocery store aisle with a huge bag of Cracker Jack as she pushes her shopping cart along.

Another scene features a little girl discovering that the prize inside the giant Cracker Jack bag is really, really big, too. Her prize is a live pony!

The Super Bowl broadcast of this commercial was not the first. Several weeks before the game, the commercial apparently was shown in selected areas, including north central Iowa. Cracker Jack collector Judy Thornton of Charles City, Iowa, reported seeing the commercial a few weeks before the Super Bowl showing. And the sighting of a different ad featuring the big bag was reported at about the same time by another viewer, also in Charles City.

Before Cracker Jack was purchased from Borden by Frito-Lay, a commercial for Fat Free Cracker Jack also aired. In it, a husband and son are looking everywhere for mom, who is hiding in a tree house so that she can have the Cracker Jack all to herself.

In February 2000, Cracker Jack commercials began to appear again on TV during kids' programs, scheduled to run for eight to ten weeks. One of the commercials was a re-run of the Super bowl "That's a Really Big Bag" commercial. The other commercial shown was a new one called "Search"; it showed kids looking for prizes in all kinds of foods, including a bag of flour, a turkey, and a pie.

In conjunction with the reappearance of the pony commercials, Cracker Jack featured a contest with 5 life-size plush ponies valued at $3,000 each as the prizes. Winning game pieces were inside specially marked 8 oz. family size bags of Cracker Jack and Butter Toffee Clusters and said "Mommy, Mommy, I Won a Pony!" (There were no special non-winning pony-related prizes inside the specially marked packages.)

In March 2000, a new series of nine three-dimensional suction cup prizes packed in family size bags of Cracker Jack included three ponies, inspired by the Super Bowl commercial.

A little bit of trivia: According to Frito-Lay, the name of the pony "actor" that played the the prize in the commercial is Ragtime.