80s Advertising: Avoid The Noid

With Domino's atop the pizza game in the mid 80s with their "30-Minute Guarantee," the Noid continued to add to the pizza chain's popularity. His name originated from the word "annoyed" (a Noid) and did everything he could to foil Domino's plans to make a great pizza. Later, the famous catchphrase "Avoid The Noid" became instantly associated with pizza, like the conditional reflex of Pavlov's dogs. A couple years after his debut, the Noid was showing up everywhere including Toy R' Us stores and in our homes on the Commodore 64 computer.

The first video game was called Avoid the Noid, only appearing as a platform computer game. The plot was simple...carry your pizza to the top floor of the apartment building and "avoid the Noid" along the way by running, unlocking doors, and doing somersaults. "Advergames" were obviously a blatant attempt to sell brand name products but that never stopped us from playing Kool-Aid Man on Atari 2600 in 1983 or 7UP's Cool Spot on Sega Genesis in the early 90s. A new Noid game was produced for NES a year later in 1990 called Yo! Noid, which finally let us control the Noid instead of avoiding him...