Nestle Quik

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Probably tastes just as good today.

Nestle[1] Quik, these days known as Nesquik, is a drinks mix produced by Nestlé. For much of the later half of the 20th century this flavoured grit was all that stood between the Western world and brittle bone disease.

Promotions[edit | edit source]

The game cards included in the tins

During 1985 and into 30th April 1986 the company ran a promotional tie-in with Tonka for GoBots, known as the Challenge of the GoBots Game (not to be confused with the GoBots Game or the Challenge of the GoBots video game). This was an 'Instant Winner' game with either 200,000 or 250,000 prizes - each tin included a small game card that would reveal if the child being forced to drink crap milkshake would get to soften the blow with some free GoBots. The Grand Prize was the entire GoBots range available at that point; 250 of these were available. The confusingly-named First Prize was one of 50,000 Messenger Toys, and the second prize was one of 150,000 GoBot Action figures (probably at that sort of number one of the regular-sized ones). It is not currently known what the other 49,750 prizes would have been; the print advert (see below) lists 250,000 prizes but fails to break them down properly, while Nestle point of sale for retailers and the tins themselves only list 200,000. This might sound a bit illegal but bear in mind the powder would have involved the labour of children younger than those drinking the 'Real Chocolate' sludge so it's small potatoes.

Advertising[edit | edit source]

Nestlé were presumably trying to draw attention away from one of their many atrocities at the time of the promotion (it wasn't long after their attempt to gaslight women into believing their formula milk was better for babies than breast milk was gaining column inches), as they really went for it. In addition to a TV commercial advertising the promotion they also took out print advertisements in numerous comics across its' run. These adverts, featuring Nel Yomtov-influenced art of Cop-Tur, Turbo, Cy-Kill, Royal-T, Psycho, Leader-1 and Baron Von Joy, are notable for a steady stream of ebay and Etsy sellers removing them from said comics and attempting to sell the yellowed, fading pages printed in literally millions of comics as rare vintage toy adverts. If you really feel a framed picture of off-model GoBots is just the talking piece your rumpus room needs you're probably better off digging through your local comic store's 50-cent back-issues for old copies of Alpha Flight.

The irony is the promotion did also include a GoBots poster; the point of sale sent to retailers included one that would be free with any purchase of a promotional tin of Nestle Quik. While it's not exactly Alex Ross quality the poster does at least seem to have actually been commissioned for the promotion, rather than being one of those bits of art commissioned by Tonka at the birth of the line that were used for most things, notably prominently featuring the Super GoBots version of Cy-Kill.

Footnotes[edit | edit source]

  1. The diacritical was often left off Nestlé to hide that a customer was buying dirty foreign muck instead of patriotic muck.