DailyDirt: Promotional Space Food
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Red Bull made a huge advertising event out of Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking free-fall from the edge of space. But it’s not the only food/drink maker to sponsor a space-related promotion. Maybe it’s a bit disconcerting that food companies have enough dough in their advertising budgets to fund crazy stunts, or maybe it’s awesome that advertising/marketing budgets are being used to fund incredibly cool projects…. Either way, here are a few other examples of sponsored space foods.
- Pizza Hut delivered the first pizza to the International Space Station in 2001, which Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachov ate as a $1 million promotional stunt. Salami instead of pepperoni was used as a topping, and extra salt and spices were added to adjust for the deadened taste buds of a long-term space inhabitant. [url]
- Commemorative M&Ms celebrated SpaceShipOne’s successful sub-orbital flight and its Ansari X Prize win. M&Ms were also used on a test flight to demonstrate weightlessness to spectators watching a remote video stream. [url]
- M&Ms have been taken aboard numerous NASA missions for about 30 years. However, NASA has generally been coy about calling the space-worthy candies M&Ms. [url]
- Specially-designed cans of Coke and Pepsi have been on a space shuttle mission during the Cola Wars. The beverages weren’t that refreshing for astronauts due to a lack of refrigeration and messiness. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
Filed Under: ads, food, m&ms, space, sponsorship
Companies: coca cola, mars, pepsi, red bull
Comments on “DailyDirt: Promotional Space Food”
don't forget Tang
I wonder how they cleaned up the spray of a carbonated beverage in zero-G
Space Food
I was very young when the lunar lander made history but I remember some of the merchandising. Like the glow-in-the-dark lander sticker in a box of cereal, Tang, and a few other trends. There used to be “breakfast sticks,” which were like a soft Tootsie Roll packaged in a thick, foil wrapper.
Now I wish I’d saved the sticker. It was really cool, but I stuck it on a wall destined for wallpaper circa the early 70’s.
7Up made it into space too!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/weekinreview/10schw.html?_r=0