This Godzilla Movie Had the Most Aggressive Marketing Campaign of the ’90s

The ’90s was a simpler decade. 9/11 had yet to instill extreme fear in United States citizens and a certain political figure was yet to turn the country against itself. It was a great time to grow up in. And, when it comes to entertainment marketing, it was the apex. ’90s marketing and tie-ins could make even the most disappointing blockbusters look appealing. The ultimate example of this? Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla.

A film that was trashed by critics nearly as much as the subsequent year’s execrable Wild Wild West, Godzilla‘s biggest crime was ultimately stomping on Toho’s flagship franchise in the eyes of G-Fans. Emmerich himself has admitted he was uninterested in adapting the IP, and that shows. But now that over 25 years have passed, it’s easy to look at Godzilla as just a fun, goofy ’90s mega-movie. As for the G-Fans, they now have an entire Monsterverse to watch if they want a more traditional American take of the radiated behemoth.

Clever Tie-Ins

If ’90s blockbuster cinema can be equated to anything, it’s a rollercoaster ride. Sure, the Avengers movies of today are a ride in their own right, but there’s something about the biggest movies of the 1990s that just have a different energy. Jurassic Park, The Mummy, Independence Day, Anaconda, Speed, Con Air, The Fugitive, Twister, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, they all serve as examples. And, while Godzilla may not have received the critical praise of a Speed or a Jurassic Park, it fits in nicely with those aforementioned titles.

This inclusion in the lineup includes the strength of the films’ marketing pushes. But there’s an argument to be made that Godzilla‘s was the biggest of them all. Godzilla in 1998 was akin to Batman in 1989, though once the film hit screens all the chatter wasn’t nearly as flowery as the talk surrounding Tim Burton’s blockbuster. That said, at least the returns against the marketing spend weren’t as disappointing as the ones for the also-heavily-pushed Waterworld.

[RELATED: Godzilla Minus One Director Weighs In on Godzilla 1998]

And, speaking of Batman, the three ’90s Bat movies also hold certain similarities to Emmerich’s film. In the case of Batman Returns, the marketing advertised something different from the final product. And, in that case, parents weren’t happy taking their kids to such a dark film. The more direct comparison is Batman & Robin, which had tens of millions spent on toys and fast-food tie-ins only for people to hate the movie they were tied into.

When it comes to fast-food tie-ins for Zilla, Taco Bell’s $20 million campaign was consistently clever and, by this point, iconic. The toys were neat but the commercial with the chihuahua trying to catch the oversized monster with the call of “Here lizard, lizard, lizard” and a cardboard box trap was gold.

Diddy (then Puff Daddy) even teamed up with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page for the song “Come with Me.” That received a lot of play, and its sampling of Led Zeppelin’s masterful “Kashmir” is actually put to good use over the film’s end credits. And all due kudos to Diddy, he actually managed to end up the biggest monster in a movie about a 180-foot radioactive iguana.

Size Comparisons at Their Best

Going along with Taco Bell was a slew of extra-large billboards, most of which compared their enormity to the title monster. For instance, one was as tall as an eight-story building with the text “He’s twice as tall as this sign.” They even got extra creative with that aspect of the push by fully covering buses in what amounts to a wraparound poster with the slogan “His foot is as long as this bus.” As great as the Taco Bell stuff was, the size comparisons were the true ace in the hole of Godzilla’s marketing campaign because it was a twofold win. For one, it was ideal promotion of what monster movie fans wanted to see. Two, they weren’t seeing much of anything with the marketing.

And, given how the reactions to the monster’s design panned out, less was way, way more for Godzilla. In the end, the critical thrashing Emmerich’s movie took is what did it in for the potential sequel, but the irony is that it’s gone on to be a fan-favorite, an enjoyable relic of its time, and if adjusted for inflation it sold a comparable number of tickets to 2014 reboot, which kicked off not just a franchise, but a shared universe.