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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Dannon Punch-Out

by Ian Bogost March 21, 2005

categories: Advergames

Dannon has an amazing new advergame promoting its Frusion breakfast smoothies. Breakfast Brawl is a Mike Tyson Punch-Out parody that pits you against undesirable breakfast heavyweights like Moe Finntop and Dave "A sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich" Jenkins. Yes, you literally fight against a bowl of cereal. At key moments in the game you can deploy a Frusion powerup to great effect. (thanks to Daniel)

Dannon seems to be going after more men, with an ESPN Fantasy Baseball sponsorship and the Breakfast Brawl game. I'm not totally convinced by the frusion powerup, but boxing against alternate breakfast foods is definitely fodder for a clever game. It would be nice if the game gave us some indication of the relative health effects of these alternate breakfast products -- saturated fat and carbs vs. calcium and protein. But the game itself uses a great pique technique. I mean, who'd match yogurt with NES retro boxing.

Comments (2)

That game is absolutely gigantic in it's quality! Sure, I can see a million different academic ways in which it really doesn't do much, but I highly doubt the point of the game was anything other than viral in nature.

I've sent it to four friends, who spent all day trying to beat the bagel, and who have sent it out to even more friends. Everybody loves the tribute to MT's "Punch Out."

Money well invested. Message sent, brand recognized. I love that they include a little bottle on the power punches, because otherwise, it could have easily as been Gorton's or Mars sponsoring the game, as far as I remember. They could have branded this a bit better, but since most of the kids I've sent this to have played it 10+ times, it's some sweet work.

Not viral... but creatively, it's genius. I'd love to find out how much Dannon spent for this.

Kevin Glennon on March 23, 2005 5:58 AM

This game rocks!!! the comments about each charecter are classic. the music is spot on, and i feel like a kid again with an new NES game in front of me. high score so far 8850, but wanna break 10k, big ups to mikey Ts for the original but this definitly is an amusing game.

GK out

Anonymous on July 8, 2005 5:11 AM

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