SEGA'S ILL-CONSIDERED VIZ COMIC ADS

1/10/2018

Something Sega got right fairly early on in the Mega Drive's life was its marketing. Its famous "cybo-razor cut" TV ads succeeded in making the new system appear cool, without trying too hard. Unfortunately, not everything the company attempted was so successful.

To wit: the series of ads that it ran in the legendary Viz Comic.

They were designed to fit in with the publication's style - crudely hand-drawn, and featuring even cruder humour. Alas, they misunderstood, on a fundamentally spectacular level, what made Viz popular. Indeed, Sega's ads would've fitted in perfectly with many of the similarly-not-getting-it Viz imitators which sprung up in the late-80s and early-90s; Zit, Smut, Poot, Spit et al.

Here, then, are ten of these woeful communiques.

THE HARDER IT GETS

Yes: that's right. It's a masturbation joke, dredging up a decades-old schoolboy gag about "playing with your joystick". Here, Sega makes it their own, talking about "squeezing your knob" and "shooting all over the place".

Am I the only one rendered a little nauseous by all this - specifically the excitable subtext in the wording - when I think of the middle-aged marketing executive who came up with it?

WHAT A HUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Farting. That's how Sega chose to sell its Mega Drive this time; by likening it to flatulence. It's a bold strategy, to be fair, and a wonder that other consumer electronics companies haven't gone this route.

How much more effective would the next Apple event be if Tim Cook stepped onto the stage, cupped his hand to his anus, emitted a parpsy, and then revealed a new Apple Watch nestling in his now-fetid palm?

WHAT'S BLUE AND PISSES?

What's blue and pisses all over everything? Sonic the Hedgehog. To be fair, this is one of the better attempts. It's not particularly witty or imaginative - and I'm not entirely sure why they've chosen to place Sonic, drinking a cocktail through a straw, in a 1950s maternity ward - but, well, its bluntness is otherwise in its favour.

MEGA SEEDY

Get it? He thought they said "Mega Seedy" - so he dressed up in bondage clothing and a bra! Here's Sega kink-shaming the BDSM community, which is something you can't do these days, apparently, even though those people are perverts.

THE BIGGEST PAIR

You can play the Game Gear on the beach. That's what they're saying, see, via the means of a question we've all asked. To wit: which pair will be the biggest on the beach this summer, mmm? Will it be the ladyboobs, or the man's hairy testicles? We all simply love to speculate on this issue!

90s Sega was obsessed with testicles. Utterly so.

LINFORD'S LUNCH BOX

See, here Sega has chosen to contrast its Mega Drive with the genitals of athletics legend Linford Christie. Who has seemingly been apparently afflicted with elephantiasis of the scrotum. Either that, or he's burdened with a gravid egg-sac.

SEVEN PINTS

This one doesn't really make sense until you read the smallprint. Basically, Sega is challenging (mostly male) gamers to draw the company logo in the snow using their own urine. Of course, nowadays they'd insist on contestants taking photos of this - #segapiss - so they could be uploaded to the corporate Instagram account. That'd be something to see.

In fact, we should all do this at Christmas.

SNORTS UP IT

I'm sure the creators of Ecco the Dolphin - a gentle, new age-style game - would've been thrilled with the drug-snorting connotations aimed to attract the sort of moronic Cro-Magnons Sega believed were reading Viz.

THE BEST SIMULATION EVER

I... I don't really understand this one. It seems to be a literal suggestion that you can lay back on your sofa and enjoy the best simulation ever, in the form of Virtua Racing. And yet... I... I mean... are we meant to have mistaken the word "simulation" for "stimulation"? Is that what this was meant to be? Is "simulation" a typo? What's... what's going on here?!? How is it innuendo? It IS meant to be innuendo, right? Isn't it!?!

GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS

Yes: Sega here equates the experience of owning a Mega Drive with doing a big, satisfying, poo, and all other systems akin to constipation.

24 Comments

Ste Pickford

1/10/2018 10:23:48 am

Whenever advertising agencies attempt to do comic art, their (presumably highly paid) artists can never do it right, and it always goes to show how good the real comic artists actually are. I don't understand why they don't hire real comic artists to do real comic art or cartooning for the ads, instead of getting 'proper' illustrators to do it badly.

Although, that sofa is nicely drawn in the second-to-last one.

GUFFO

1/10/2018 10:24:08 am

I love the piss one. What really sells me on a company is seeing their logo written in steaming piss.

Bootle

1/10/2018 10:35:19 am

I remember in the early 2000's Viz did a competition where you could win the entire Nightmare on Elm Street DVD collection and other Elm street related goodies.

In true viz form they titled the competition page "Shite, Camera Action".

Whatever company it was that ran the competition seemed to have no clue about Viz's style of humour, saw this as an insult, and cancelled the competition.

Dont know how many people took the time to cut out, fill in and post off the competition slip only to be told a month later the competition had been cancelled.

Clive the Entity link

1/10/2018 10:43:31 am

Holy fucking shit. I remember seeing a few of those....maybe it's me being a bit more "mature" and "sensible" (and "fat) but I'm slightly shocked (NOT "offended" like everybody else is these days) seeing these again. To see a legit ad about Sonic pissing is up there with him appearing in a game with Mario..oh wait! 'kinell, Sega!

Timothy greig link

1/10/2018 10:51:49 am

I mind them well funny nowdays you,d be offending someone whos says the rain hurts them this would give them a heart attack sorry if i offended lol

Gaming Mill link

1/10/2018 11:00:02 am

I've been reading Viz for well over 30 years now without missing one issue and I honestly have no recollection of seeing any of those Sega ads. How curious.

Marro

1/10/2018 11:25:57 am

Viz is better than ever IMO.
Drunken Bakers is a tragicomic masterpiece and the Profanisaurus and Letters page have the funniest writing in Britain (outside of Digi, of course).

1/10/2018 12:48:49 pm

I'd love to see an annual just of Drunken Bakers. As for the Letters page they're not all made up by the staff of Viz, contrary to popular belief; myself and a friend have contributed quite a few over the years. It's odd because they tend to pop up many months after emailing them.

Acid_Arrow

3/10/2018 04:51:52 pm

I appreciate the Drunken Bakers but find all their artist's work a bit nihilistic and depressing. Gilbert Ratchet knocking up a machine to help a vicar retreive his porn collection from the chruch roof still does it for me.

Paul

1/10/2018 11:22:48 am

I think I remember seeing a few of those. I’m not sure if they were in Viz (they have that attempt to “fit in” with that kind of humour, but failing spectacularly).

The Ecco one reminds me of a certain Digi competition where one had to write into the Teletext offices with “Greasy blow-hole compy” on the envelope. And, no, I didn’t. That’s because I didn’t have a Mega Drive at the time, and when I did it was too late.

Spiney O'Sullivan

1/10/2018 11:53:18 am

Sega also had a bunch of weird ads in 2000AD in which Judge Dredd threatened and arrested people for playing Sega consoles.

In retrospect it was kind of the reverse of their later Japan-only Segata Sanshiro campaign, in which a man who looks a bit like a Japanese karate Gary Glitter run around assaulting people for not playing the Saturn.

Trevor Cod

1/10/2018 12:15:51 pm

Why is the toilet so far from the wall? Just look at that waste pipe.

RichardM

1/10/2018 12:29:05 pm

I’m not sure about the angle on it, either. Going to be a ighty slow departure for anything he’s “posting” to “Browntown”.

colincidence link

1/10/2018 12:43:32 pm

Does one have to be a certain age and gender to get Viz? Lots of people praise it, but all I've ever noticed in it is the crass appeal.

Apart from the Letters Page, which is Frequently Commendable!!!!

Bob Trousers

1/10/2018 01:56:09 pm

It might say more about the advertising we have nowadays (or me), but I find these refreshing compared to the po-faced, boring stuff we get now. at least they were trying, even if it does look a bit desperate.

Meatballs-me-branch-me-do

1/10/2018 02:29:53 pm

There was another Sonic one where he’s outracing a pizza delivery driver with the words “some hedgehogs you just don’t mess with.”

Sure?

Blallo

1/10/2018 03:17:30 pm

Well, "SEGA" means "to masturbate" in italian jargon...

MrPSB

1/10/2018 03:25:27 pm

FANNIES

DEAN

1/10/2018 03:49:20 pm

I'm fairly sure that at that point in time they were being distributed by Virgin - and to be fair they've always been a little bit cheeky.

I've just remembered an ad in Viz for Richer Sounds - something about being: HOTTER THAN SATAN'S BOLLOCKS!

Geebs

2/10/2018 06:17:54 am

If we’re assuming a mammalian bauplan, and since one of the givens of the advert is that Satan has bollocks in the first place I can only believe that we are, one would expect that the Lord of Hell’s testicles would actually be slightly cooler than the rest of him.

Ben Burton

1/10/2018 03:55:02 pm

Did Mean Machines really think Ecco was the best mega drive game ever? Or were they talking from their blowholes?

1/10/2018 04:06:37 pm

Certainly the one that provoked alternate agorapohiba and claustrophobia, along with a crippling sense of isolation and powerlessness.

(Or was that just me?)

Robobob

1/10/2018 07:38:39 pm

I always wanted the TV adaptor for the Game Gear.

I bet it was shite though.

Floop

2/10/2018 01:24:09 pm

it was indeed shite, and stopped working when channel 5 went on air

SEGA'S ILL-CONSIDERED VIZ COMIC ADS

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