How About That Thing?

Now I know there’s a guy called The 7UP Guy who speaks with a Caribbean accent, and talks about how his drink has no caffeine, and what not. We will not be talking about that guy.

Then who are we talking about? Why, none other than this man right here.

This is Orlando Jones: The 7UP Guy throughout the late 90s, and maybe a bit of the 2000s

Before these commercials, he was a castmember on the somehow long-running sketch comedy series, MadTV. If you’ve never heard of MadTV… Yeah, don’t feel too bad: you’re not missing anything particularly important. Seriously. MadTV fucking sucked, y’all. I’ll try not to dwell on it too much, but when your most memorable sketches are Ms. Swan, or those Puerto Rican chicks I’ve long since forgotten the name of… Yeah, how exactly did this show last as long as it did? Seriously, I think the most memorable thing this show ever did was have Tenacious D on as a musical guest back when Tenacious D was at the height of their popularity with the mainstream, and that’s about it.

NOTE: MadTV is not to be confused with MAD!. Mad was a cartoon that ran on Cartoon Network in the early 2010s. That show, by stark contrast, actually had its moments. Also, it was based a lot more on MAD Magazine.

But hey, we all have to get our start somewhere, right. Rick Moranis got his start as one half of Bob and Doug McKenzie, after all, and look at some of the comedy gold he’s been part of. So maybe there’s hope for Orlando Jones.

Well, honestly, if he appeared in anything after these 7UP commercials, it’s news to me. But one thing I will say: these 7UP commercials were some of the funniest commercials I’d ever seen.

I know, right? Commercials actually being worth sitting through? Outside of that Mayhem guy from Allstate, such a concept seems outright foreign nowadays. Probably because advertisers are well aware the internet killed TV, and internet dwellers have developed mainstream, or third party apps and browser add-ons that block out their crap in favor of getting more of the content internet dwellers crave. And you can tell how defeated advertisers are by how lazy their commercials have gotten over the last couple decades. Made even worse by ChatGPT coming along, and doing all the writing for them. Seriously, I’ve heard radio ads for a car dealer that were so obviously written by AI that it’d almost be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

But in the 90s, there was an understanding. We all knew commercials sucked, so let’s at least try and make them as memorable as possible. And soda commercials in particular had some pretty interesting ones.

• Pepsi had that little girl who could assume random voices at will.
• Coke had the polar bears.
• Orange Slice had their “A taste of something twisted” campaign.
• Sprite had their irony filled, fourth wall breaking campaign that said things like “it won’t make ice skaters better at hockey, but it’ll definitely quench your thirst.”, or “it won’t make make-a-wish kids better at pro-wrestling, but it’ll quench your thirst.”, just to name a couple.
• A&W Rootbeer was doing their “That’s pretty thickheaded” campaign that led to one of my all time favorite commercials that I’m genuinely amazed they got away with.
• Mountain Dew… Was on its own weird little tangent, as memory serves.

And then, there was Orlando Jones, the 7UP guy. Doing such things to promote the brand as putting a 7UP machine in the middle of an active highway as a way of getting traffic to the brand. Or hosting a contest where in people sent in their “cans” in order to win fabulous prizes, only for it to be implied that a bunch of dudes sent in butt pics instead of 7UP cans like he intended. The most well known was his attempt at making “make 7UP yours” the new slogan for 7UP, only for it to backfire, and everybody thinking he was insulting them.

7UP even got in on that whole blind taste test protomeme Cocal Cola was using to thoroughly own Pepsi. Apparently, no one told The 7UP Guy the other cup was supposed to have something DRINKABLE in it. Oh well, at least now we know 7UP tastes better than rancid milk.

A lot of people look at me gush over these commercials, and wonder what the hell is wrong with me? Apparently, I found this character more nostalgic, more memorable, and dare I say, more favorable, than it really had any right to be. And after thinking on it, the answer is simple… But pretty personal.

You see, in the summer break between seventh and eighth grade, I had jaw surgery. To make a long story short, my braces that I’d had since sixth grade appeared to be doing nothing after a while, and my parents were apparently left with no other choice but to make their kid go through jaw surgery to reshape and realign my jaws. The next six weeks of recovery were probably some of the most miserable days of my entire life.

For starters, I suddenly found myself with a short-lived, but still brand new speech impediment. Great. Because bullies at my middle school didn’t already have ENOUGH to work with as it was. Bad enough I’d already earned the nickname Eeyore, but now I had this problem on top of it.

For four of those six weeks, I was on a liquid diet. Which basically meant my diet consisted primarily of Carnation Instant Breakfast. If you asked thirteen-year-old me, those instant breakfasts fucking sucked out loud, regardless of flavor. So much so, that I just refused to eat anything at one point. And that’s the story of how I managed to become so underweight that it scared the hell out of my mom.

In the first week or two, they prescribed painkillers. I don’t remember what they were called anymore, but they made me loopy. So much so, in fact, my dad made the executive decision to discontinue that particular regiment, and thoroughly bitch me out for something I said while on said regiment. I can’t remember what it was anymore, though.

On top of being dangerously underweight due to not wanting to eat anymore of that instant breakfast bullshit, I ALSO wasn’t sleeping regularly, either. Some of it was the previously mentioned pills, but just as much of it was just depression.

And just in case all of this wasn’t humiliating enough, my mom STILL enrolled me into summer school that year. Can’t let those school bullies miss the perfect opportunity to shame you for the way your voice sounds now, what with all that reconstructive jaw surgery making you sound even more hilarious than before and what not. Thanks, mom. Oh well, at least the school cafeteria gave me pudding cups and chicken broth. Not exactly the lunch of champions, but it helped me regain some of the weight I lost by virtue of NOT tasting like chocolate covered ass crack.

In summation: my summer vacation was fucking miserable. But then, out of nowhere, there was something that brought me out of my funk. That thing was none other than The 7UP Guy explaining how he made room for delicious 7UP on grocery shelves… By pulling other 6-packs off the shelf, and hurling them across the store. It seemed like such a mundane joke. My dad definitely didn’t think much of the commercial, or The 7UP Guy as a whole, from what I remember… But seeing that commercial for the first time, my mouth hurting, my stomach eating itself, and a week or two of summer school related humiliation under my belt… I’m not going to lie, dear reader, I laughed my ass off!

I suddenly found a whole treasure trove of commercials featuring The 7UP Guy, and found literally every single one of them to be absolutely hilarious. Some were funnier than others, of course, but man, I loved these.

Ironically, despite my fandom of the commercials, I never really developed a loyalty to 7UP itself. You’d think that adoring these commercials would mean I’d develop some sort of cult like devotion to 7UP for pulling me out of the dark… But I never really developed a taste for it. Like, I didn’t HATE the drink, by any means. I guess my heart still belonged to Surge, back when that was around, SUPPOSEDLY shrinking everybody’s nuts.

But those commercials? They definitely gave me a good laugh in a time when I really could’ve used one. And I think that’s why I hold this character, and these commercials in particular, as close to my heart as I do.

Looking back at them today… Honestly, they’re still pretty amusing. Like, maybe not laugh out loud funny, but I could definitely see why thirteen-year-old me liked them as much as I did. If you can find them on YouTube, I recommend giving them a look.