The "Obey Your Thirst" campaign was a collection of commercials that were a part of popular lemon-lime soda Sprite's ads in the 1990s. It focused on a Deconstructive Parody of the materialism of contemporary advertising, expressing that, while drinking Sprite won't make you cool or give you superpowers, it will quench your thirst.
The campaign was also famous for producing several Hip-Hop-focused ads, featuring several now-legendary emcees in various scenarios, including the last thing anyone expected: an official crossover with Voltron (We're not joking, that actually happened). The hip hop portion of the campaign lasted well into the 2000s, with the slogan eventually just being shortened to "OBEY".
Image is Nothing! Thirst Is Everything! Obey Your Tropes!:
- Adorable Abomination: The cartoon sun from the "Sun Fizz" ad is treated like this by everybody who sees it.
- Affectionate Parody: Kool Keith's commercials were a send up of Five Deadly Venoms, with Keith himself (actually Millie Jackson in disguise) as the Sixth Venom, and featuring Eve, Roxanne Shanté, Mia X, Angie Martinez, and Amil as the Five Venoms.
- Battle Rapping:
- The KRS-One/MC Shan ad featured the two longtime rivals battling it it out on the mic, in a reference to their numerous battles during the "Bridge Wars" in the late 80s.
- While all of the Venoms had battle verses, only Roxanne Shanté and Kool Keith directly rap battled one another during their fight.
- Be Yourself: One commercial from 1994 had an indecisive young man morphing into several different images to try and fit in, including hip hop, a grunge rocker type and even a preppy. He ultimately decides just to be himself while also pondering what meal should he have with his Sprite.
- The Boxing Episode: Parodied with the KRS/Shan commercial, which is set up like an actual boxing match, ring girls and all, but features them Battle Rapping instead.
- Celebrity Endorsement: Possibly the most famous of the ads featured Detroit Pistons star Grant Hill and the best remembered of them had his agent trying to convince him to branch out into made-for-TV dramas, writing a book (Polite Like Me) and having a pop music career. There were two alternate endings that aired concurrently: one where he rejects him saying how he would "never do something like that" right before he offers him a Sprite and one where he legitimately turns him down, only for the agent to then ponder "Maybe I'll call that big guy in L.A.; he'll do anything!"note
- Played straighter with the hip-hop ads, where the rappers work in Sprite plugs during their verses.
- Cereal-Induced Superpowers: Subverted.
- In the "Grant Hill Drinks Sprite" ad, a boy drinks Sprite on a basketball court after seeing the aforementioned basketball player do so, and then tries to dunk while a voicover says, "If you want to play like the NBA stars..." and he falls on his face, "...practice."
- In another, a boy drinks sprite before fighting Sting... and gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Another ad featured an old man taking a swig of the competition's soda. He jumps up, tosses his cane away and yells, "I'm young!!". Just one of the many things that won't happen when you drink Sprite.
- Classically-Trained Extra: The three actors in the one commercial, while playing tough basketball players in the ad within an ad, end up being these, with the one man even dramatically telling the director (who admonished him for holding the can upside-down) "Don't talk to me like I'm a child! I played Hamlet at Cambridge!"
- Crossover: And a pretty left-field one, to say the least. The campaign crossed over with the original Voltron series, putting several notable emcees (Common, Mack 10, Fat Joe, Goodie Mob, and Afrika Bambaataa) in the place of the original pilots, and featuring original music from said emcees.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Two notable examples:
- One famous commercial has a young boy facing off against Sting, and drinks a Sprite, hoping that it would give him wrestling skills. He predictably ends up getting ragdolled by the larger wrestler.
- The Voltron crossover, which came out at the tail end of the infamous East-West Coast feud, featured several rappers, each representing different regions, trying to take out Zarkon's Ro Beast individually, and getting faded each time. It took Afrika Bambaataa convincing them to unite as Voltron to finally take it down.
- Deconstructive Parody: Of advertising tropes, especially of the Totally Radical sort.
- The "Sun Fizz" Ad has the titular mascot coming to life while explaining the benefits of his product like in any other commercial. However, the family who bought the Sun Fizz are pants-shittingly terrified by this creature randomly appearing and run away from the mascot as it gives chase.
- Drinking Sprite doesn't give a young wrestling fan any wrestling skills at all, resulting in Sting absolutely beating the crap out of him.
- The "Jooky Junk" ad shows kids winning garbage prizes after buying a large amount of Jooky, including a sock (not a pair of socks, just a sock), a hornet's nest, a hernia belt, a chainsaw, a halibut, and a sea captain.
- Freestyle Version: Some of the commercials don't feature any gimmicks, and just have several emcees on set freestyling to beats. Nas, Grand Puba, and Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth are just a few who did Sprite commercials like this.
- Fun-Hating Villain: Zarkon, ever the playa hater, decides to destroy hip hop in the Voltron crossover simply because he's "not feeling it". To his credit, he's pretty self-aware about his pettiness.Zarkon: You haven't experienced real playa hating, until you've felt the wrath of King Zarkon! (Evil Laugh)
- Heroic Sacrifice: Played for Laughs in the "Sun Fizz" commercial. As the family is running from the creepy sun character, the mother trips over a vacuum cleaner. The daughter notices and screams out "Mom!" only for her to yell out "RUN!" The commercial then ends.
- Merchandise-Driven: The "Death Slug" ad is about the making of a movie where they cared more about the merch than they did about actually making a good movie.
- Skewed Priorities: The studio executives in the "Death Slug" commercial care more about the marketing campaign for their awful-looking kaiju movie than about the fact that they don't even have a script yet.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A common theme throughout many of the ads:
- One commercial had a young man excited that basketball star Grant Hill drank Sprite and believed that he would be as great as a player as him if he did too. Instead, he both falls and misses getting the ball into the hoop completely when he tries to dunk.
- Another famous spot has a young boy in a "Make-a-Wish" like program get to wrestle with Sting. While he takes a sip before he takes on the wrestler, hoping the soda will allow him to be his match, he inevitably ends up being curb-stomped as his videotaping parents enthusiastically watch on and are struck at how "real looking" it is.
- Another ad has a woman and her two children drinking something called Sun Fizz when the character mascot, an anthropomorphic sun with large eyes, comes to life. This only freaks the family out, who run away screaming (along with their dog) as he gives them chase while genuinely confused as to why they're scared of him.
- One ad had a teenaged boy wearing a pair of baggy jeans, a puffy coat and boots with loose laces at a mall to be cool. Unfortunately for him, upon getting on the escalator his laces get caught in the slots of the stairs so in trying to free himself, he promptly falls over and both the pants and the coat get eaten up by the stairs, leaving him in just his shirt and his underwear.
- Another has a bunch of young guys driving around in a convertible in slow motion, bouncing the car on its wheels to look cool. The car stops, and one guy leaps out of the car and starts dramatically chugging back his Sprite. When he turns the cap, the bottle explodes and covers him in soft drink — because all that bouncing shook it up. He does not look good while shrieking and dripping wet.
- The "Jooky" ad has a pair of teenagers watching a Jooky drink commercial and open their Jooky can, thinking it is literally a party in a can, but nothing happens.
- Stock Footage: The Voltron commercials uses stock footage of King Zarkon from the original anime, with new audio from Kevin Michael Richardson (who had
replaced Jack Angel as the voice of Zarkon in Voltron: The Third Dimension around that time). - Wire Fu: All of the fight sequences in the "5 Deadly Venoms" commercials.
