Advertising is everywhere ad nauseam, which often times works to its detriment. I mean, we all click the SKIP button on YouTube commercials, and happily ball up pamphlets for the newest sushi place down the road. That’s why marketing is always innovating new tricks. Perhaps the arguably most desperate—albeit “cool”—play to transport the recognizable faces of known franchises from their traditional and tangible shopfront mediums was onto home consoles.
In 1993, Virgin Games successfully helped 7Up’s anthropomorphic icon “Spot” make the jump from the soda shelf to both the Sega Genesis and SNES with Cool Spot. This not only gave the drink company a shot in the arm, (admittedly, I still find myself choosing it over Sprite), but also displaying the sheer power of the ad-machine at work in games, especially in the food and drink department.
Video games wrapped entirely around corporate refreshments had been around long before Cool Spot came along, but it still boggles the mind as to how one of the early mascot-based titles ever made it out of the studio door. As a kid, I remember renting and playing Domino’s Pizza-backed Yo! Noid without too much afterthought. However deftly the mascot platformed through Capcom’s 1992 title, not even the Noid could escape the infamous controversies that followed Domino’s marketing campaign.
However, as game tech improved, so did the desire to utilize it as a promotional vehicle. Frito-Lay’s Cheetos brand gave its mascot, sassy Chester Cheetah, not one, but two consecutive games for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo in 1992 and again in 1993. The graphics were fair, but the gameplay for each game was as mediocre as the term “cheese-product”. Instead of heightening their brand, Cheetos’ thirst for promotion produced a series of objectively bad titles.
Speaking of thirst, it’s time to crack open a digital 7Up! So named for originally containing seven ingredients, the brand is synonymous as the “Uncola”. Perhaps it was this alternative slant that gave 7Up the impetus it needed to spawn its adorably badass icon, Spot. Unlike the Noid, Spot’s entire aesthetic was pleasing to the eye: sunglasses at night, circular, tiny and powerful indifference. In other words, ripe for a platforming mascot with attitude.
Virgin Interactive took up the challenge to create a platformer that retained Spot’s coolest elements without sacrificing quality. The result was a surprisingly challenging yet satisfying tightrope walk between an interactive 7Up commercial and a memorable gaming experience. The graphics popped, the music slapped and above all…it actually made me crave a fizzy sip of 7Up. Except, this was in 1993 – in the age of Adblocker, have we moved past the novelty of snack-based games and product placement?
Perhaps, perhaps not – remember, marketing is always innovating. Take Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for example. On the surface, it served as a welcomed escape from the “mainland” to play God and craft your island to your will. However, as innovation and progress tend to show, no man is an island. Eventually, mainlanders intrude and begin to peddle their wares. It was inevitable then that real-life fashion brands officially launched clothing lines within the Animal Crossing stores thereby reaching a much higher demographic than traditional advertising.
Moreover, in the realm of fast-food, KFC Philippines shook their greasy hands with Animal Crossing back in 2020 to create an ephemeral and exclusive “KFC Island” within the game. Players were able to purchase miniature buckets of digital chicken with the Colonel Sanders avatar there to personally oversee the entire enterprise. But it begs the question, while the KFC initiative was much more subtle than a full-length video game, is it any more preferable?
The advent of social media has created a marketing environment 1,000 miles away from the broad strokes of the 90s. Ads are targeted towards their niche markets with technological precision, courtesy of the all mighty algorithm. When it comes to brands, influencers and small communities are the real judges of what should and shouldn’t be invested in. And therein lies the nostalgic beauty of Cool Spot.
There were never any illusions that it was anything other than a playable commercial derived from a recognizable brand of soda. The fact that just typing that sentence felt difficult indicates how much the cultural landscape has changed. Today’s customers don’t want to be called out on being customers, but to actually be courted and convinced. However, despite obviously being a marketing extension of 7Up’s ad machine, players at the time still didn’t care if it was a ploy to sip on a particular brand of soda (or maybe we were too young to know better). If something was cool, it just was cool, with no need for a superfluous personality to verify it.
Today’s marketing strategies may rely more on subversive in-game methods, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see more earnest franchise games like Cool Spot. I mean, would a Wendy’s video game really be an awful idea? Daydream with me, if you will: a red-headed pig-tailed warrior fighting off demon burger patties and McDonald lawyers! Now, I know what you’re thinking: All this naive open-mindedness may open a Pandora’s box of shameless gaming content, but rest easy. We’ll take all the proper precautions. Under no circumstances would Subway be allowed to make a game. Ever. That Uncharted 3 DLC was bad enough as it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, a buy-1-pepporoni-get-1-soda-free deal at an undisclosed business is calling my name!
