Ten Great Star Wars Commercials
A
huge guilty pleasure of mine has always been watching commercials. While I’ve
usually fast-forward through them quickly and get back to whatever I’m
watching, there’s always something alluring about them. They get thirty seconds
to hawk whatever they’re selling, and every once in a while you’ll find a real
diamond in the rough, a rare ad that really takes its time to create a fun and
memorable narrative.
And Star Wars has never been a stranger to
advertising. In the forty years since the first movie came out, Star Wars characters have been used to
sell everything from electronics and cars to toys and food.
So I
thought it’d be fun to take a look back at ten of the best, worst, and just
plain strangest Star Wars commercials!
My only rules for this list is trailers and TV spots for the
movies aren’t allowed, and as I’m trying to focus on older ads this time around
I won’t be including any commercials from the Force Awakens era (but if I ever do another one of these I’ll
probably include some of them there). Also, this isn’t a top 10 list, so I’ll
just be listing them off from oldest to newest. With that said…
Burger King glasses
As
far as I can tell, this commercial is from all the way back in 1977, the same
year A New Hope premiered in
theatres. Once it became clear that the movie was going to be a success unlike
anything anyone had ever seen before, companies everywhere were scrambling to
get the rights to develop Star Wars products.
Burger King was one of them, and they held onto that license until at least the
release of the Clone Wars movie in
2008.
I
love how this commercial is a window into the 70’s. You get a new glass when
you buy a regular sized Coke for only 59 cents, meaning you can get the entire
set for roughly $2.35, provided you live in the 70’s and can get to Burger King
before February 2nd.
Speaking
of that, I wonder how much a full set of these glasses cost these days? Let’s
go to eBay and find out.
Yikes.
Japanese tuna (Sea Chicken?)
Like
I said before, back in 1977 everyone and their brother was scraping to get
themselves a piece of the Star Wars pie,
and some people decided that they’d get it themselves whether they had
Lucasfilm’s blessing or not.
This is
a Japanese ad that I think is supposed to be for a tuna brand called Sea
Chicken (I’m not even going to try rationalizing why they named their tuna
brand after a chicken), and it’s obvious from the first second that this isn’t
an officially licensed Star Wars commercial.
The costumes look like they came straight from the dollar store, especially
C-3PO, who only resembles the original character in that he’s wearing what
looks like an actual C-3PO mask.
This
commercial is so awful it never fails to make me laugh. It’s thirty seconds of
pure insanity onscreen while some disembodied voice sings “Sea Chicken! Sea
Chicken!” over and over again. It’s one of the more memorable commercials on
this list in all the wrong ways.
Underoos
“Star Wars Boba Fett is here! That means
Darth Vader’s always near!”
This
one’s such a classic that it made a brief (pun not intended) cameo in the Star Wars Celebration 2017 40th
anniversary sizzle reel. And why wouldn’t it? It easily ranks up there as one
of the most ridiculous ads the galaxy far, far away has ever seen.
The
premise of this one is that these kids are dancing and singing about Star Wars characters while wearing
Underoos. At the end of the commercial R2-D2 asks C-3PO for some Underoos for
himself, but is turned down because “Underoos are for earthlings”. Honestly, I
think the real reason is because R2 wouldn’t fit in them, but whatever.
Apparently
Underoos are still a thing, but I’m pretty sure that nowadays a bunch of kids
dancing around in their underthings on live TV wouldn’t fly as well as it did
back in 1980. I honestly don’t mind, if only because I don’t want to spend
another thirty years trying to get a Force
Awakens-themed Underoos song out of my head.
Return of the
Jedi AT-ST toy
Here’s
an ad for an actual Star Wars product.
The Kenner toy commercials usually came in two different flavours depending on
who they were catering to: there were more collecter-oriented commercials that
just showed off the different toys as well as advertising new ones you could
only get from mail-order, and there were ones more geared towards younger
audiences with kids running around and playing with the action figures.
This
ad is…neither of those.
Here
we see an AT-ST/Scout Walker storming through the forests of Endor while a
really cheesy narration explains everything the toy can do. The awful writing
on the narrator is what really makes this one stand out. For a fun drinking
game, take a shot every time he says “walk” or “attack”. You’ll be on Naboo
before you know it!
(Disclaimer:
Please don’t actually do that)
C-3PO’s
Star Wars and cereal have gone hand in
hand since the 1980’s, and their first ever brand was C-3PO’s. While I’ve never
gotten to try it for myself, it basically looks like Cheerios except each bit
of cereal has two O’s fused together, which makes it futuristic…I guess.
This
is a fun little ad for them, where R2 and 3PO are lost on a planet populated by
what look like rock people. They demand food, and 3PO is happy to serve them
the cereal that has his face on it. We then cut to a suburban kitchen, where
C-3PO’s golden ghost creepily watches over a pair of kids eating the cereal.
I
said this ad was fun, not that it made sense.
While
C-3PO’s may have become a thing of the past, a new Star Wars cereal was introduced a few years back, and it looks…
…yeah.
Star Wars for Atari
Another
old favourite, this ad’s become practically infamous after somebody on the
internet stumbled upon it a few years ago. An unsuspecting young boy picks out
the new Star Wars game for Atari,
remarking that the arcade version is great. He then gets…a little overexcited.
I
especially love how barely any of the actual game is shown in this commercial.
We get a few shots of it here and there, but most of the time the camera is
focused awkwardly close to the face of our protagonist over here. Honestly, for
1983 the original Star Wars game was
a pretty darn impressive feat graphically, and I’m definitely going to talk
about it more in depth someday. But trust me, it’s nowhere near as exciting as
this commercial makes it out to be.
The
Atari has plenty of amazingly awful commercials for their games, with the Star Wars one being the most famous of
the lot. If you want to see more, I highly recommend the Spider-Man, Mario Bros. and
Atari classic E.T. commercials.
“SOOOOOOOOME
GAAAAAAAAAAAAME!!!”
Star Wars for NES
From
one game ad to another, this one’s definitely lesser known than the Atari one
but is still delightfully cheesy.
A
suburban home is suddenly overrun by Imperial forces, led by Darth Vader.
Upstairs, a pair of kids are playing Star
Wars for the NES, oblivious to the carnage going on in their living room.
Vader goes upstairs to get them, but their mom heroically throws herself in his
way. Before Vader can do what he does best, the kids beat the game and Vader is
vaporized. The mom stumbles in the room, and the kids chastise her for not
knocking.
I
love the plight the mom goes through in this commercial. She knows her life is
on the line when she throws herself in front of Vader, but she does it anyways.
Then, when he disappears and she opens the door to check on them, these
snot-nosed little brats don’t even thank her for throwing her life on the line for them! Look at her expression at the end. Those two definitely aren’t getting dinner.
I
also love the narration at the end of this one. “A force stronger than your
parents doesn’t want you playing.” Uh, okay. I guess I won’t buy it then if
someone really doesn’t want me playing. Knowing my gaming skills I probably
wouldn’t beat it in time to save my family.
Energizer
Energizer
has always had great commercials starring their trademark sunglass-wearing pink
bunny, and my favourites are the series from 1994. This set of ads saw
various classic cinema villains trying to take down the poor unsuspecting bunny
and take his battery. He went up against characters like Dracula and a generic Bond villain, but the best one
is the Star Wars one.
The
Emperor instructs Vader to get the bunny’s battery, and he confronts the pink
menace in the Cloud City carbon-freezing chamber. Unfortunately for poor Vader,
once he’s got the rabbit cornered his lightsaber runs out of power. He unscrews
the bottom and discovers that someone’s replaced his kyber crystal with drained
Supervolt batteries, allowing the bunny to keep going, and going, and going.
There’s
a lot of cool little details in this one, most noticeably that it uses Clive
Revell’s Palpatine from the original cut of Empire
Strikes Back before Lucas overdubbed him with Ian McDiarmid in the Special
Edition. I also like that the scream of fury Vader gives at the end of the
commercial is significantly better than the over-the-top “Nooooooooooo!” we get
from him in Revenge of the Sith. It’s kind of telling that Energizer did Vader
better than the prequels ever did.
Phantom Menace Pepsi
Even
now that the launch of Force Awakens has
come and gone, it’s hard to deny that Phantom
Menace might be the most hyped up movie of all time. With Force Awakens everyone kind of had a bit
of dread that it would turn out disappointing, but with Phantom Menace few even considered it. The three Star Wars movies before it were all
amazing, so why wouldn’t this one be?
This
commercial might be the most 90’s thing you’ll see all day. An unsuspecting
couple climbs into a taxi (why do all the terrible things in these commercials
happen to poor innocent people?) and are confronted by a reject Ninja Turtle
who spoils the entire podracing scene for them.
His
taxi turns into a literal podracer, and the cruel slimy jerk ignores the poor
couple’s screams of terror and flies them willy nilly around New York, finally
stopping in front of a Pepsi machine. You don’t get a good shot of the couple
again so I just assume they died on the way there. Phantom Menace kills, kids.
I
especially like that they needed to give you incentive to buy the VHS. If you
buy Phantom Menace alongside some
Pepsi and tortilla chips you’ll get 3 bucks back. But honestly, I wouldn’t trust any Pepsi being given to me by this alien freak.
Spike TV
This
one is much more recent than the others on the list, but this one was a huge
favourite of mine as a kid and I couldn’t help but put it on the list.
Before
the Disney buyout Spike TV was able to get the rights to showing Star Wars movies, and this was their way
of telling it to the world. Vader is golfing with some friends, but upon using
the Force to cheat they chastise and then attack him.
Honestly,
while Vader’s a dirty rotten cheater here, I think he’s completely in the right
to get defensive with these guys. They were going to attack him with a golf
club for god sake! What would someone say if you swung a golf club at a
disabled man just because they got upset that your friend was unhappy with the
way they played golf?
So
those are ten of my favourite Star Wars commercials!
Are there any I missed? Feel free to leave a comment telling me your
favourites, and I’ll see you next time!
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