The Coolest Spot of All

By Jason Moody

It's 1989.



Friday night. You're sitting in the living room with your family, watching Perfect Strangers or Family Matters ... maybe Full House, stuffing your face with homemade pizza. Commercial break. your dad hits the can, your mom goes to get a soda: routine commercial activities.



Then you see it. The coolest product mascot ever animated. How do you know he's cool? Well, for one, he's got sunglasses on - but aside from that ... his name is Cool Spot.



After watching this slickly animated red dot cleverly turn a glass of dreary, drab ol' cola into a fresh, spritzy, clear, dare I say healthy soft drink. (Notice the allusion of cola to oil in the commercial below.) You made your way out to the fridge to get a glass of 7UP. And if you had no 7UP, you can be darn sure you were asking your mom for some the next time you were riding in the front of a shopping cart.

Why? Because Cool Spot was cool ... and by the late 80s, 7UP had begun marketing itself as an "Anti" brand. They were the Uncola. You could fight the man. Pepsi? Coke? They only wanted your money - they're big bad corporations ... greedy. Buy 7UP and help bring down the soda world's Big Brothers.



Drinking 7UP was ANARCHY! It was cool. Essentially 7UP was the grunge band of sodas ... 3 years before most people had even heard of Nirvana.



Cool Spot continued to be used into the early 90s by 7UP. The branding was huge - t-shirts, hats, phones, plushies, but most memorable to me ... was the video game.



Or should I say ... video games?!



Yup, that's right - they made multiple video games with Cool Spot as the protagonist. In 1993, 7UP partnered with Virgin Games to create a game for both the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo.

While I didn't own the game, I remember renting it for the Genesis and unlike 7UP, the plot was, well, unclear. But the game wasn't terrible. There was even a sequel called "Spot Goes to Hollywood," released for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation.



So, what do you think? Should 7UP go retro and bring back Cool Spot?



Are you nostalgia senses tingling?



Oh, and hey, do you remember the 80s like I do? Share your thoughts with us on Facebook!