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> The game is notable for the fact that it was the first game CD-ROM to be released inside a cereal box. Sales of Chex cereal increased by 295% in incremental v
by js2 4y ago
> The game is notable for the fact that it was the first game CD-ROM to be released inside a cereal box. Sales of Chex cereal increased by 295% in incremental volume over base and 48% in volume share during this promotion.[1] Much of the manufacturing cost of the CDs was paid for by America Online. AOL was allowed to include its dial-up online service client on the disc in exchange for this contribution.
If you weren't around then this may be hard to believe but I cannot overstate how ubiquitous was the distribution of AOL CD-ROMs. They were everywhere. It felt like you couldn't open a magazine without one falling out. You'd stumble upon them on the sidewalk. AOL must have stamped a billion of the damn things. (Edit: I was afraid I might be exaggerating but apparently it really may have been a billion. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds)
About 5 years ago I was pacing the Knoxville marathon and toward the end it was just me and a college student, maybe she was twenty, and somehow I brought up AOL. She'd never heard of it. She'd never heard of CD-ROMs. I was like, so there was this movie called You've Got Mail[1]. She hadn't heard of that either. I felt really old.
1. 1998 movie where AOL is a plot element. If you're up for a romcom that's a nice time capsule of the late 90s, you could do worse. Also has PowerBook G3s and the sound of modems.
- chungy 4y agoNever heard of CD-ROMs? Maybe the term was unfamiliar compared to just CD? I have a hard time believing any young person really hasn't heard of CDs, if not handled them.
- js2 4y agoI think she'd heard of CDs but didn't know they could be used for anything other than music.
- cobertos 4y agoWhy hasn't anyone tried this today? Or like, with flashdrive or some other modern equivalent? It seems like it would be a great way to get your product to literally everyone if you had the VC money
- celim307 4y agoMost people use phones QR codes are the closest thing
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoPlease let's not normalize plugging random media you got in the mail into your computer.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- saghm 4y agoThere was a commercial my family and I used to love back in either the late 90s or early 2000s (I was probably 10 at most, so I don't remember exactly) where a couple was super excited to be receiving an advertisement CD rom, and they rushed to open it...and put it into the last remaining slot of a giant tower they had constructed from hundreds of them that I believe was shaped like a fish. The other funny part my siblings and parents and I liked was when they got to the part of the commercial actually advertising something and taglines were showing up on the screen and the couple broke the fourth wall and commented on them ("Oh look honey, 'dramatically cut spam'!"). I tried to mention this to my girlfriend a while back, since we're almost exactly the same age and a lot of memorable commercials from our childhoods overlapped, but she had no idea what I was talking about, and I couldn't find it (or even any mention of it) online anywhere.
- js2 4y agoDoesn't ring any bells but https://old.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/ https://old.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/ may be able to figure it out for you.
- jedberg 4y agoI was in college during peak AOL CDs. I literally covered an entire wall of my dorm room with AOL CDs (shiny side out). It impressed the nerds.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoI literally used them for coasters.
- Fatnino 4y agoUsed ribbons to hang them from our fruit trees to keep the birds off.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoOoh, yeah, I bet that would have worked great for deer too.
- Fatnino 4y agoI'm old enough to remember free AOL floppy disks. (I'm actually pretty sure I know where one still sits unopened in a drawer). The free floppys were better than cds because you could wipe them and have a perfectly usable disk.