There are few “people” in this or any other world that love pizza as much as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They pretty much live for it.
To celebrate the upcoming new animated TMNT movie, “Mutant Mayhem,” Xbox just cooked up a special-edition video game controller that includes a diffuser to make it smell like pizza.
the pizza party never stops with these guys🍕
follow @XboxGamePass & RT this post with #XboxTMNTMoviesweepstakes for a chance to win these TMNT-inspired controllers!
be sure to see @TMNTMovie in theatres 8/2/23 in the US!
ages 18+. ends 08/13/23. rules: https://t.co/C2Pjfi7yru pic.twitter.com/h6P3sjcvu7
— Xbox Game Pass (@XboxGamePass) July 24, 2023
There are four versions, too. Each one with color-coded accents to correspond to the four Ninja Turtles’ famous masks.
It’s an apt promotion for the movie tie-in, but I can’t help but think about how many pizza chains have missed this opportunity to give people the sensation of walking by a pizza place, getting a whiff of the delicious pizza inside, and impulse-buying a pie or two.
The controller will only be available through a sweepstakes on Twitter, where users need to follow Xbox Game Pass on Twitter and retweet the account’s sweepstakes tweet to win one.
Xbox has gotten pretty creative with its promotions lately. There was the Barbie Dream House console recently, which fits in nicely with all of the other pink items hitting the market to commemorate the blockbuster’s release. There was a Walkman to capitalize on that sweet, sweet nostalgia that kids who didn’t even live through the Walkman era love so much. And, of course, there was the refrigerator.
It’s not too far off from what KFC did, which was a fully functional video game system that also cooked food. But, as I said earlier, this ties in directly with the call-to-action to buy said food. This just taps into one particular facet of the movie characters and uses that in-world lore to create a fun promotion.
It’s actually more like what Xbox did for the release of the latest “Space Jam” movie, with branded kits that were co-branded with Nike. It might’ve been smart for Xbox to co-brand this with a pizza chain, but it looks good as is.
And anymore, promising exclusivity is a surefire way to get interest. So, Xbox will get a few more Twitter followers than they might’ve had before, which in turn could lead to more subscribers to the Game Pass service.
Cowabunga.
