The '90s were full of weird, wonderful, and supremely cringe-worthy content, to be sure. Amongst the particularly odd are a selection of commercials starring none other than video game's favorite femme fatale, Lara Croft.
Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is the queen of video game culture, with an iconic presence unmatched by any other female character on the scene. Her influence is immense and far-reaching. The success of the original Tomb Raider was overwhelming.
For many, Lara Croft is seen as the epitome of feminine power, grace, and intelligence. People like her, and want to be like her. Of course, it didn't take very long for companies to start thinking of ways they could tap into Lara's influence to boost sales of their own products. Even if said products were distinctly un-Tomb-Raider-y. Here are some of the more wacky ones we could find.
Mademoiselle Lara Croft
In 1999, a trilogy of absurd treasures emerged in the form of French commercials for the Spanish car manufacturer SEAT, owned by Volkswagen. At this point, the first three Tomb Raider games were going strong and Lara would have already had a good foothold in the gaming industry.
The commercials all take the form of FMVs - the kind you see sprinkled throughout the first three games - featuring Lara navigating her way through some Tomb Raider-y chase scenes with her usual finesse. But now she does so with the help of some really underwhelming-looking hatchbacks. Check out all three ads below:
It's difficult to choose which part of these are the best, most ridiculous aspects. It has to be a tie between the gratuitous bikini shot and the suggestion that Lara Croft would choose some sort of Sims 2-era family van over a Porsche two-seater or a Jeep Wrangler as her favored mode of transport. But then again, how would she be able to fit in all those low-poly surfer bros?
Larazade
Why stop at automobiles, though? That's the mindset which a lot of marketing directors apparently adopted when it came to Miss Croft. Another product for which Lara was a proud ambassador was the energy drink Lucozade, which in all fairness does make some sense.
After all, one of life's many unsolved mysteries is how Lara happily runs and flings her way through these games without ever so much as taking a sip of water, let alone any other life-sustaining substance. Unless you count the antiseptic solution from her medpacks.
Here are a selection of Lara's Lucozade adverts, circa 1999:
Her Lucozade stint didn't end there - in fact, it was just getting started.
This sponsorship was the biggest she'd had, and commercials (including live-action ones) continued airing until around 2002. Lucozade went so far as to change its name to Larazade for a spell, in preparation for the release of the 2001 film starring Angelina Jolie - Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Then, more recently, the company once again teamed up with Lara to promote 2018's Tomb Raider movie starring Alicia Vikander, offering a fitting (and amusingly self-aware) tribute to the original partnership from back in the day. Check it out here:
Tomb Raider & The Legend Of The Visa
And the award for what is perhaps the biggest stretch of them all goes to none other than Visa! Yes, as in: credit cards.
In around 2003 (not quite the '90s, but close enough) TV-viewers were treated to an epic commercial featuring a live-action version of Lara Croft played by Modern Family's Sofia Vergara. If you were to watch the thing without any prior knowledge, you'd probably think it's nothing more than a promotion for the sixth game in the series - Angel of Darkness - whose release would have coincided with this at the time. But then she whips out her Visa-brand credit card shatters your foolish expectations. Why do I suddenly want to spend money?
How Not To Market A Game
And finally, we come full circle to where it all began. In this bonus round, we simply have to talk about this advert for the first Tomb Raider game itself, circa 1996. If anything, it perfectly depicts how not to market a game successfully, but rather - like one commentator puts it - how to create a faithful replica of a Nine Inch Nails music video:
Like, we kinda get what they're trying to go for here, but it still comes across more like a '90s fever dream than an advert for a Tomb Raider game. But hey, something obviously worked, considering the blinding success that came with the release of the game that gave us one of gaming's most influential and beloved heroines of all time.