Comedian Rob Riggle is the latest actor to play KFC’s Colonel Sanders.
For football season, the ex-Marine and former “The Daily Show” regular is starring in a series of sports-themed commercials centered on the fictional Kentucky Buckets, the first professional football team from the Bluegrass State.
Riggle appears in four videos.
KFC has also set up a Tumblr page featuring Buckets memorabilia, including a picture of a 1970s-era, hand-held electronic football game; a vintage trading card; and a diagram dated from 1962 of a football spring loaded with KFC’s new $20 Fill Up bucket.
Riggle is the latest in a line of seasonal colonels that KFC has introduced since the Yum! Brands Inc. subsidiary brought back the iconic mascot in May 2015, 35 years after the death of founder Colonel Harland Sanders, with former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Darrell Hammond. He was followed by another SNL alum, Norm Macdonald, in August 2015 for a video series of autumnal “Fryerside Chats.”
Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan next filled the Colonel’s shoes for a 30-second football spot for the 2016 Super Bowl.
Then, for the summer, famously tan actor George Hamilton played the “extra-crispy colonel.” Promotions during that period included an actual fried-chicken scented extra crispy sunscreen.
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