Yes, the dad in the new Hershey’s commercial is Patrick Renna, thirty-three years after teaching us how to make s’mores in The Sandlot: discover the beautiful generational easter egg behind his return.
You’re watching TV and a completely normal, almost intimate scene comes on: a dad, with a mix of intense seriousness and pure passion, is explaining to his kid the perfect ritual for making a s’more in the new Hershey’s commercial. As you listen to him break down the steps in detail, something clicks. A strange sense of déjà vu starts creeping into your mind.
That face, that wildly animated expression, that almost sacred way of describing how the chocolate melts… we’ve lived this scene before. There’s an invisible thread connecting those images to a distant, yet crystal-clear memory. It’s just that so much time has passed.
Well, your sixth sense isn’t lying to you. If you’re wondering who the actor in the new Hershey’s commercial is, the answer is about to take you back over thirty years—right into a movie you watched when you were a kid, featuring a face who, incredibly, has managed to keep the exact same expressive spark that made him a generational icon.
Patrick Renna is back: the s’more teacher from The Sandlot is the 2026 Hershey’s commercial actor
The actor you see in the commercial is Patrick Renna, and his face looks so familiar because in our collective memory, he will forever be tied to an absolute cult character: Hamilton “Ham” Porter, the talkative, charismatic, and loyal kid from The Sandlot, the 1993 cinematic masterpiece that redefined the spirit of childhood and 90s summers.
Hershey’s choice to cast him for this advertising campaign is a stroke of meta-textual genius that plays upon one of the most iconic scenes in pop cinema history. In the 1993 film, it is Ham Porter himself who delivers the legendary lines, teaching the newcomer, Smalls, step by step how to prepare a perfect s’more:
“First, you take the graham. You stick the chocolate on the graham. Then, you roast the mallow. When the mallow’s flaming, you stick it on the chocolate. Then, you cover it with the other graham. Then, you stuff.”
Seeing Patrick Renna today, thirty-three years later, playing the role of a caring (and comically deadpan serious) father passing down the exact same ritual to his son creates a powerful wave of nostalgia. It’s the portrait of a generational hand-off: a child who in 1993 explained the rules of life and sweets, and who today, as an adult, is ready to guide the next generation.
But what has Patrick Renna been up to all these years? Very often, Hollywood child stars tend to run away from the roles that defined them, or they struggle to find their own footing as adults. Renna did the exact opposite, embracing his status as a nostalgic icon with extraordinary maturity and self-awareness.
Despite entering cinema history at just 14 years old with his very first audition, Renna built a solid and continuous career as a television and film character actor. In the years following The Sandlot, he starred in other youth classics of the era, such as The Big Green (1995) and Son in Law (1993) alongside Pauly Shore. And as he grew up, his charisma never faded, allowing him to appear in memorable roles within some of the most important TV series of recent decades, such as The X-Files, Boston Legal, and GLOW.
Today, seeing him in the Hershey’s commercial brings us a strange form of comfort. It confirms that the kid who defined our childhood summers is still out there, with the same friendly, clean face, ready to explain that, in the end, to be happy, you still just need to know how to toast the perfect marshmallow.
Authority and nostalgia: Hershey’s genius marketing
Beyond the immediate charm, the nostalgia operation orchestrated by Hershey’s for this campaign represents a true lesson in influencer marketing applied to collective memory. In the modern advertising landscape, we are used to seeing famous faces lent to brands of all kinds, often for pure reasons of commercial visibility, but the case of Patrick Renna is profoundly different: he possesses what in consumer sociology is defined as a genuine “historical authority” over the product.
For an entire generation, Renna was literally the one who codified and taught the grammar of the s’more on the big screen. Choosing him of all people to play the father in the commercial means tapping into a pre-existing, universal emotional archive. Hershey’s did not have to struggle to build the credibility of its message, because it took a piece of pop culture rooted for thirty years and simply relocated it into the present.
This is why the commercial works on a subconscious level, in such an immediate and powerful way. It strikes straight at the heart of that audience which today, having become parents themselves, smiles in front of the TV and sees themselves in that deeply serious dad, aware that some traditions — just like the most beloved films of our childhood — are meant to never go out of style.
