Commercial Kombat Part One

Choose Your Fighter! Are You an alliteration-slinging Briscoes Lady? A Gang Of Bunnings Brutes? Do you have what it takes to Spray and walk away?

I’ve been itching to make a sequel to my Super Smash Brothers Aotearoa poster I did last year for quite a while, but with a focus on the ‘live-action’ faces of New Zealand’s advertising history if I did.

But this time I decided to take it one step further, going beyond a poster to match up and draw the imaginary fights ‘Mortal Kombat’ style! When coming up with the the perfect matches, I decided to pair “fighters” who shared similar themes (home furnishings, hardware, banking, aerosols) and as a result, there are some really fun, and dumb, matchups.

It’ll be released in two parts, exclusively for Paid Subscribers (a little nudge nudge to join the paid tier), it’s been a silly, light project to work on, and my hope is that it will be a nice refresher for you all from all the dire state political comics.

After each edition, I’ll also share some fun facts from our nation’s advertising history such as: What was the exact song that National Bank Horse galloped to? Which passionate furniture store woman has excitedly told us of holiday-themed sales for over 35 years? How did 9/11 affect ASB’s Goldstein? And are the people in Bunnings Ad real employees?

Find out below, after we bear witness to the first four rounds of Commercial Kombat!!!