Cool Spot Tricked Me Into Playing A 7 Up Commercial
In 1993, I thought Cool Spot was simply a cool spot. A fun, round little guy who loved bouncing on balloons, killing crabs, and doing front flips. I was innocent then. A fool. Years later I learned the truth: that this swaggering, shades-wearing asshole was in fact an anthropomorphisation of the red dot from the 7 Up logo. I was playing a commercial for a soft drink and I didn't even know it. But it's not my fault, because I was playing the PAL version of the game.
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In the early 1990s, 7 Up was pitched in the US as 'The Uncola', whatever the hell that means, with Cool Spot as its mascot. He's the archetypal Poochie: a character with 'attitude' designed by overpaid marketing executives to cynically appeal to children and teenagers. It worked, though. Cool Spot was so inexplicably beloved, he somehow survived till 1997 and spawned an empire of merchandise—including a series of wildly successful platforming games.
The US versions of Cool Spot open with our hero surfing on a giant bottle of 7 Up. It's highly unsubtle, but makes it obvious from the very beginning that this game is really an elaborate piece of marketing material. However, in Europe the bottle has no label. Add to this the fact that Cool Spot wasn't actually the drink's mascot on this side of the pond—we had that weirdo Fido Dido instead—and it's obvious why we didn't realise we were playing an ad.
Cool Spot was published by Virgin, who replaced all mentions of 7 Up in the PAL release with references to its own brand. In the game you grab letters to spell out a word, which earns you an extra continue. In the US version the word is UNCOLA, a reference to that stupid marketing buzzword, but in
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