Toy Ads That Time Forgot! 11/01/06
For this week’s entry into Toy Ads That Time Forgot! I present what the marketing types like to call a “cross promotional advertisement.� In this case, Nestle Quick was trying to use the immense popularity of transforming robots in the 80s to get a foothold in the chocolate milk drinking/comic book reading child demographic. Unfortunately for Nestle, they ended up with the stinky end of the transforming robot segment and are forever associated with Gobots in the annals of history.
Gobots are the universal sign of utter suckitude. To be fair, I had a few of them and thought they were okay, but as a kid Transformers was it. Gobots barely even scratched the surface of cool-dom in kidville. The only sales Gobots ever had where when someone got a child in a Christmas exchange and didn’t want to pay full price for a real Transformer, thinking that the kid wouldn’t know the difference. Well, they did know. They knew they were holding a piece of crap when they could be playing with real robots like Optimus Prime.
I wonder if this ad campaign was successful for Nestle. It probably took them several years to get that Gobot taint off their respected brand name. Sorry, Nestle, I don’t mean to drag your wonderful chocolate milk products back into the muck, but it must be done for history!
As for the kid that won this? I can only imagine the poor sap with his complete set of Gobot toys. Here’s a brief play I just wrote based on it:
Billy: (To Todd) Hey Todd, want to come over to my house and play? I just won all the Gobots!
Todd: My Mom just bought me Razorclaw. I’ve got all the Predacons now so I’m going to have them form Predaking.
Billy: But, but, I’ve got Cy-Kill and Leader 1!
Todd: Please don’t talk to me anymore.
And end scene.
toy collecting, toys, Nestle, Gobots, Transformers, ads
November 1st, 2006 at 11:51 am
Hey, I still have leader one. That may explain my complete lack of friends.
November 1st, 2006 at 12:17 pm
I had a Cy-kill don’t feel bad. Like I said, I kind of liked them, but I knew they sucked compared to Transformers. Just look at their names, Leader One, leader of the good guys? Cy-kill who transformed into a motorcycle? Were they even trying? Although, I will give it to Cy-kill that I’d rather transorm into a vehicle rather than a gun (like Megatron) who had to be used by other Decepticons. Talk about submissive.
November 1st, 2006 at 1:27 pm
They corrected that with the Galvatron edition. In the new movie coming out, they’re saying he will be an alien airplane.
November 1st, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Yeah, Galvatron was so much more scarifying than Megatron.
Alien airplane? odd…
Speaking of odd, my dad bought a gun recently (more as a collectors item) that is almost the same model that Megatron transforms into. Talk about wierd.
November 1st, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Wow…I friggin remember Quik in the metal tin.. I remember also one time my brother almost ate a roach that was hiding in one of the tins. We still talk about it to this day
November 1st, 2006 at 10:47 pm
That’s totally gross BB. Thanks for sharing!
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:40 am
BB,
Didn’t you guys see the ad on the side of the Quik tin about the prize inside?
April 30th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
[...] Toy Ads That Time Forgot: Ugh, GoBots April 17th, 2007 by Paul Ugh, GoBots. Just when you think you’re done having to ever think about them again, they pop up back into your life just like that rash you got from the chubby drunk girl at the party. You know, the one with Hamm’s on her breath and loneliness in her eyes? [...]