Welcome to the 2025 Heistmas Advent Calendar, a daily drop of pop culture Christmas icons, oddities, and joy. Check back every day from now through December 25 for each daily entry!
When I was little, somewhere around five or six, my mother started taping Christmas specials. We didn't have a lot of money, and my parents were masters at squeezing every drop of Christmas enjoyment out of the holiday with as little cash spent as possible, so Mama Jackson came prepared. She got out her TV Guide, found out when they were playing all the hits, and pressed record.
We ended up with three VHS tapes' worth of material, and those tapes became sacred documents in our house, the Jackson Family Holiday Archive. They are still in the family collection, and my sisters and I somehow didn't wear them out after years of repeat viewings. We watched them every time we were home sick from school. It didn't even need to be Christmas.
Those tapes are the reason I know stuff like A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Garfield Christmas by heart, but the specials aren't the only things on the tapes. They also feature a treasure trove of holiday commercials from the early 1990s, and because I watched these things literally hundreds of times, they are stamped on my memory.
Which brings us to this 7UP ad. Just watch it, and then we'll talk.
We all see what's happening here, right? At least on the surface. It's the 7UP Spots (I know that's what they're called because they literally had their own video game at one point.) making an ice sculpture with a jackhammer and a chainsaw, and inside the ice there's a frosty glass of delicious 7UP waiting for Santa himself. It's beautifully animated, and it's cute.
The thing is, though, that when you watch an ad like this literally hundreds of times (not exaggerating), you start to crack it open, like staring at a Rothko until the color blocks start to move and vibrate with primordial force. In what universe does 7UP "taste like the holidays"? Do the holidays taste like lemon-lime soda, and if so, can we switch the official beverage of the holidays to Sun Drop, or even Mello Yello?
Then it gets weirder. Why do the Spots have a chainsaw? Who gave them the chainsaw? Do they have their own little Spot economy with Spot power tools you get at Spot Sears? And weirdest of all: How do you carve a 7UP out of a block of ice? Is that a special kind of ice that you have to secretly harvest from Martian ice caps?
Did this commercial break my tiny little brain back in 1993 and now I'm just like this all the time? Maybe, but I don't care. Yes it's a corporate product designed to sell a different corporate product, and yes commercials are hardly the point of the holidays, but weird as it sounds, this amusing little 30-second spot feels like home to me, and we all want to be home on Christmas.
Check back tomorrow for even more Heistmas Advent Calendar Goodies!
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