A Schuylkill County native was part of a team that won $1 million for its Doritos commercial that was broadcast during Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday.
Tommy Schaeffer Jr., Phoenix, Ariz., originally of Minersville, said Monday afternoon that it wasn't until Monday morning that they found out they won, although his and another contestant's commercial aired during the game.
"Thank you Schuylkill County," Schaeffer said. "I had non-stop Facebook messages, text messages, emails and I'm pretty sure there's not a person in Schuylkill County that didn't know about it. It's nice to have the coal region blood supporting it."
His commercial, which was called "Time Machine," was a finalist in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest and starred a boy named Jimmy who tricks a man, Mr. Smith, into giving away his Doritos for a ride in a cardboard box "time machine."
Mr. Smith is convinced he's in the future when he emerges from the time machine and believes Jimmy has aged into an old man.
"It's still kind of setting in," Schaeffer said. "It really hit me today."
Schaeffer said that while people saw their commercial on television Sunday night, they hadn't heard from any official source that they had won until Monday morning.
He also said that many people may have turned off the game towards the end and missed the second Doritos commercial called "Cowboy Kid."
The rules of the contest stated there was one commercial chosen by Doritos and one chosen by the public, with the public vote being the overall winner.
The announcement was made Monday morning, when they were presented with an oversized check from Doritos on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Along with the $1 million prize, Schaeffer's team also gets the chance to team up with Marvel on the set of "The Avengers: Age of Ultron."
Schaeffer said that his team split the money, not equally but by role. Some people had more than one part in the making of the commercial, such as his friend, Ryan Anderson, who was the director and editor for the project.
"A little bit for everyone," he said. "It's still a good pay day."
Schaeffer was strictly part of the crew for the project, doing some conceptual work as well as "tons of post-marketing."
Counting every person that helped, the cast and crew was about eight people, which Schaeffer said "includes people that went out to Costco and bought us water."
The commercial, which was one of 4,000 entries, cost about $300, most of which was spent on Doritos and water.
According to a previous story, Anderson's son, Gavin, who portrays Jimmy in the commercial, came up for the concept for the commercial.
Since only one or two people will be able to go to London to work on the set with Marvel, Schaeffer isn't sure if it will be him, but he plans to go to London to hangout with his friend.
As for what he plans to do with his share of the $1 million, he has no plans of buying a new car or house, but buying health insurance since he's been a freelancer for a number of years without it.
"I think the first thing I'm going to spend a dime on is health care, go to the dentist and just doing regular person stuff," he said.
He currently works as an audio engineer at his own company, Polymathus LLC.
For the future, Schaeffer said that they would have to do the project again and personally has many ideas for projects.
Some of his other recent projects include a documentary on autism called "Be With Me" that recently premiered in Arizona and took first place in the documentary drama category at the Atlanta Film Festival last year, and a film called "Broken Leg" that will be premiering in the next couple months.