Here are ten games from the days when advertisers got around restrictions on selling artery-clogging, tooth-rotting, nutritionally-challenged fare, to kids, by hiding their message in the form of video games.
In the 1980s, KP decided inexplicably to promote Skips with the character of Clumsy Colin - who got his own computer game, in the form of Action Biker. Quite why you'd want to promote a snack food with a character who appears to be suffering from dyspraxia is anyone's guess, but Action Biker - despite being radically different games on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 - was inexplicably well received at the time.
Mercifully, Colin's bleached, puckered anus was absent from the gameplay.
Cool Spot is remembered as being a sufficiently good game to spawn a sequel, and in both the associations with 7-Up were relatively underplayed - despite a sequence in which he surfs upon a 7-Up bottle. It displayed the sort of polished animation and considered level design which propelled programmer Dave "Not That one" Perry to later success with games such as Aladdin and Earthworm Jim.
It earns its placing in gaming history as being the final project Dave "Not That one" Perry programmed before Cool Spot, and the first roll-out of the game engine which he would do his best to run into the ground over the ensuing years.
Describing himself as a "hip kitty", Chester's main modus operandi was to steal the Cheetos from other snackers. This behaviour was oddly absent in 1992's Too Cool to Fool, though its unnecessary sequel, Wild Wild Quest, featured much in the way of Cheetos-quaffing.
Chester's other notable video game-related appearance was in issue 72 of the Sonic The Hedgehog comic series, in which he appeared inexplicably as a movie director.
Anyway, they did an Atari 2600 and Intellivision game of him.
According to Wikipedia, The Noid was "Clad in a red, skin-tight, rabbit-eared body suit with a black N inscribed in a white circle, the Noid was a physical manifestation of all the challenges (becoming annoyed—'a noid') inherent in getting a pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less".
Makes sense.
The Noid was dropped as the company mascot, following an hostage situation involving a mentally ill man, who believed The Noid was somehow a reference to him.
The tragic incident was described by Time magazine thusly: "Kenneth Noid, 22, walked into a Domino's Pizza shop in Chamblee, Ga., with a .357 Magnum revolver and took two employees hostage.
"When police arrived, he demanded $100,000 in cash, a getaway car and a copy of The Widow's Son, a 1985 novel about secret societies in an 18th century Parisian prison. All Noid got was the pizza he ordered. After a five-hour siege, the two employees slipped away and Noid gave himself up. According to police, Noid has 'psychological problems'."
Beyond this, the game's ties to Coca-Cola were slight: fuelled by a sugar rush, the Kid roams the streets kicking birds and burly muscle-men, and - in one notable boss encounter - a gentleman who throws his Elizabethan ruff at him in a fit of pique.
A video game was inevitable - but despite being previewed, and scheduled by Capcom for a 1990 release, The Grape Escape was cancelled, following a dramatic and unexplained drop in raisin sales. Ultimately, the California Raisin campaign was considered a flop: Californian raisin growers revealed that the costs of the campaign were double their earnings.
Inevitably, there were accusations that the game promoted alcohol to minors, which resulted in the later sterilised version - which made a half-hearted attempt to replace the bar of the original with an all-American "malt shop", of the sort people in this country relate to in the same way they relate to Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies..