Kate Bush & Cocteau Twins' Fruitopia Ads (1994-5)

Eclectic TV Ads Volume 2

In 1994 the Coca-Cola company debuted a bold, new bottled juice beverage line, Fruitopia. It wasn’t just a fruit drink; it was a concept, a gateway to a higher plain of flavor, the one path to real, ultimate thirst quenching. Coke banked on the early nineties’ Summer of Love nostalgia trip to market their Snapple-competing drink to Generation X’s wannabe hippie crowd. The result was a striking, psychedelic television ad campaign that made Fruitopia out to be a, like, totally mind-opening beverage, man.

The following 30 seconds will not inspire:

violent crime,
a religious experience,
conspicuous consumption.
It may, however, make you thirsty.

This was the ethos behind Fruitopia’s initial ad campaign. Trippy, kaleidoscopic images of fruit and swirling, gushing liquid primed your palate; while curious, consciousness-bending ponderings whimsically invited you to become that wild-eyed free-thinker you always knew you were. The ads were extremely eye-catching. I remember being mesmerized at the age of 10 by their hypnotic images and always eager to see what weird thing they’d say to me. As funky as the visuals were, they wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if not for their accompanying music. Music so diverse, meditative, and, as it turns out, composed by none other than legendary songstress, Kate Bush.

All the 30 seconds spots from 1994 collected.

Just as filmmakers moonlight in the advertising world so too do musicians. It seems not so unusual that quirky, creative workhorses like Devo and They Might Be Giants would lend their talents to marketing, but Kate Bush doing advert work seems strange. Yet the Fruitopia ads were an appropriate fit for Bush's character and a worthy vehicle for her experimentation. You can tell she had fun coming up with the variety of sounds and toying with how much could be done in a 30-second time frame. During 1994 nine 30-second ads aired as well as a 60-second ad that played in theaters (featuring an extended version of one of the 30-second tracks). In 1995, during the Academy Awards, one additional ad aired. That's 10 total songs. Details, including all the weird Fruitopian messages, can be found here, and you can listen to the songs below.

Oddly enough, the ads with Bush's music never made it to her native England. Instead, the British Fruitopia ads featured music by Scottish dream rock big-shots Cocteau Twins and So-Cal up-and-comers The Muffs. None of the Muffs' spots have made it to the Internet but a Spanish ad with the Cocteau Twins can be seen here:

Cocteautwins.com offers downloads of their two Fruitopia songs:

FILE: Cocteau Twins Fruitopia Commercial 1
FILE: Cocteau Twins Fruitopia Commercial 2

One of the Cocteau Twins' Fruitopia songs was later remixed by Spooky, under the title “Hypo-Allergenic“, and appears on his Found Sound LP. As for Fruitopia, its ad campaigns were never again as provocative as the initial batch, and in 2001, the drink was taken off the market in the United States, but if your feeling nostalgic, Fruitopia can still be found in Canada, Australia, and a few other countries.

Please enjoy this thirst quenching playlist:

Eclectic TV Ads Volume 1

The world of television advertising is a weird and mysterious place. Around 90% of it is utter crap all fast sells on automobiles, cleaning products, or weirdly sexy CGI kangaroos. Fortunately for television viewers, many of the poor souls trapped in the advertising biz are constantly trying to work an angle to deliver something that not only sells, but entertains. In the decades since the music video made innovations in the short-subject world, many of the finest directors of advertising have climbed the ranks all the way up to feature film directors and sometimes big-shot directors are even lured into the commercial field.

This is the first in an ongoing symposium of highly stimulating commercials - Media Potluck style! So sit back, relax, and dig this:



7up: I don't know the origins of this commercial, I wish I did. It's a juxtapositional feast of 80s - Pac-Man fever unleashed not in any intensity but in the smoky, soft focus haze of Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" and gorgeous Tron-like computer graphics. The lyrics of the song are shamelessly re-done to assure me of the crisp and alluring refreshment of 7-up, but it only serves to make the experience more surreal, serene, and weirdly transcendental.



Parisienne Cigarettes, Parisienne People by David Lynch: This is one of those aforementioned instances of a known director doing ad work. Eccentric filmmaker David Lynch has, in fact, done his fare share of commercials from a perfectly normal pregnancy test ad to the intense "Third Place" PS2 ads. This cigarette commercial is 1000% Lynch, and totally amazing for it. Were I to actually have seen it on television I may have had some sort of magical aneurysm.



American Cancer Society - Smoking Fetus by David Fincher: Before he was directing hits like Fight Club and Alien 3, David Fincher made a name for himself in advertising. His ad work is as dark and distinctive as his films. His first work is relatively famous and stands out as perhaps one of the most eerie, maybe even downright scary, commercials of all time - a creepy fetus puppet smoking in a translucent womb. Yeegh.

Let's examine some other Fincher ads. In 1993 he directed a series of ads for AT&T called "You Will". The ads promoted a collection of futurist concepts conjured up by the telecommunications company. Fincher delivers on all AT&T's wildest dreams but does so on his terms, painting a smokey, worn, lived-in 15-minutes in the future as opposed to any sort of antiseptic utopia of modern convenience. Perhaps the strangest and most startling thing about these commercials is that most of these innovations are now part of our daily lives. Back then it was still sci-fi.



- Cap

ASG's Video Jukebox aka The VJ (1994)

I present to you the VJ, another find from old GamePro backissues. The VJ is a perfect example of both mid-nineties electronic excess (virtual reality, Interfilm) and the struggle of the advertising industry to communicate with the ultra hip youth culture. A recipe for bad ideas and imminent failure.

The VJ's selling point was that you'd never have to go through the hassle of changing game cartridges ever again! Just rack and stack, JACK! Never again think to yourself, "Oh man, changing SNES games BITES! It would be RAD if I didn't have to do that." In that day and age you were already tethered to the console by a chord, chances are you didn't have to go far to swap cartridges. Thing is though - the VJ didn't actually save you the trouble of getting up and switching games. You still had to walk up to it and press the switcher, there wasn't a remote. And as far as keeping things nice and tidy, the VJ might put all your games in one place - but it didn't conserve space. These bad boys were 30" wide, a foot deep, 6" tall - freaking huge! Yeah, you could shell out 300 bucks ($49.99 apiece) to get 36 games hooked up on 6 networked VJs, but you'd end up with a new piece of living room furniture, or a whole set if you service your other supported consoles.


While the above ad of the guy with games shoved into his head is pretty tubular, check this VJ ad out. The text really speaks to what a rebellious and wise crackin' youth in a jean jacket I am:

I love the VJ, it's so bad. What was odd about all the youth slang and lingo of the early to mid-nineties is that I never heard anyone use it in reality. If any of my friends or I did communicate with these rude dude inflections it was because we were interpreting what adults in advertising, television, and films had themselves interpreted 90s youth culture to be. Maybe I lived in the wrong town for it, but I'd swear that these too cool for skool kids with their funky funky fresh styles didn't actually exist... particularly not as white video gamer kids.

The VJ epitomizes much of the gaming scene of its time. Lots of third (and sometimes first) parties were looking to hook gamers into the next big thing and always bit off more than they could chew. They ended up with poorly conceived, expensive pieces of hardware nobody wanted. '94 and '95 were particularly brutal years, offering the VJ many likewise mediocre contemporaries such as the Aura Interactor - which claimed to be virtual reality, but was actually just a big vest with speakers that vibrated to simulate actually being in the game! Awesome!

All Systems Go (ASG) Technologies, who produced the VJ, went belly-up in their attempt to enter the gaming world (though they may actually still exist.) There's almost no information available online about them or the VJ. It's verified that the promised Atari Jaguar version didn't come out, and their gah-rose! game Hosenose and Booger never made it either. The Genesis and SNES VJs were slated to be released Christmas '94, but I'm curious whether they actually dropped or not. (If anyone has ever seen one or finds one, let us know!)

In my quest for Video Jukebox info I came across some other fun stuff- earlier concepts going by the name "Video Jukebox."

First up is an actual jukebox that played videos!

I've never seen one of these and I desperately want to. They store 40 music videos and 160 additional records. Tapes with new programming come every month and genre-specific collections can be ordered. A 25" monitor was built into the unit, but you could mod it out with a projector if you wanted.

From 1981 to 1986 HBO ran a half-hour long music video show called Video Jukebox. The show actually pre-dates MTV. No one is hosting any episodes, but check out these title animations. I can't help but suspect these are the products of some noteworthy studios, but I've got no info.





- Cap