Everything you need to know about the ongoing purple World of Warcraft Pringles mammoth saga

It’s certainly quite the headline, so whether you’ve been following along with popcorn in hand or you have no idea what’s happening let’s break down the latest developments of this uniquely 2026 story.

Everything started with a cross-promotion between World of Warcraft and Pringles that began over the weekend. Six massive chip canister advertisements appeared across Germany, with players encouraged to find them and scan the QR code found on the base. This code led to an online quiz, with clever players who were able to answer all nine questions correctly earning the Thunder-Ridged Elekk.

While the void-infused, skull-adorned mammoth mount is certainly worth a road trip to Leipzig, the underlying logistics of the promotion crumpled within minutes of launch. It turns out that the QR code on the very first ad to appear simply led to a website which was quickly shared on social media. Before any other cities even installed their ads, the bizarrely small stock of 3,000 elekks ran out.

Any lingering optimism that actual WoW players with VPNs and lightning-quick reflexes had snagged the limited edition mounts quickly evaporated when codes began appearing for sale on auction websites. By Monday, magenta-encrusted pachyderms were listed by the fistful for prices in the range of a few hundred dollars US. The promotion’s website was taken down and replaced with a vague message blaming hackers and promising to go live again as soon as possible.

The latest development is from Blizzard themselves, with Community Manager Kaivax acknowledging the promotional mount’s availability was far from what they envisioned. Their remedy is to bring all promotional mounts to the Trading Post eventually, removing any chance that players will miss out on the newest riding elephant because they were not a potato-snack-enjoying player from Frankfurt.

Reaction to this proclamation has been predictably polarized. While many players appreciate being able to obtain these increasingly frequent limited-time mounts without handing over their information to enormous faceless food corporations, others bemoaned that there was little point in getting excited when obtaining a rare promotional mount if it is guaranteed to be available in-game in a matter of months.

So which side of the promotional fence are you on? Stay tuned for any further updates on this extremely important elekk chronicle.