Crystal Pepsi Cool Zone
Century III Mall - West Mifflin, PA
In the summer of 1993, Pepsi launched a back-to-school promotion in sixty malls across the United States. Shoppers who visited a Cool Zone, like the one in the photo from C3 Nostalgia above, would be given a free can of Crystal Pepsi and something that looked like a credit card which could be used for discounts at participating restaurants and retail stores.
These plastic discount cards were a marketing gimmick that Pepsi went back to a few times in the early 90's. The first one I remember was called the License To Chill. I don't remember ever actually using it to get a discount on anything, but I was ten years old and finally had something to stick in the credit card pocket of my velcro wallet, so I was happy to have it. The next summer, they came out with the Gotta Have It card, and then these Back To Cool Savings Cards were available in the summer of 1993.
 |
| Palm Beach Post - Palm Beach County, FL (August 8, 1993) |
I lived in Boynton Beach, Florida in the summer that the Back To Cool promotion was taking place, and they had set up a Crystal Pepsi Cool Zone in our malls too. In addition to the free soda and the savings card, you could get a free CD if you spent $100 at the mall throughout the month of August 1993. It didn't have to be at one store or on the same day. You just had to save your receipts and once you've had enough of them to show that you've spent over a hundred dollars at the mall, they would give you a collection of songs from Billboard and Crystal Pepsi that was called Slipped Disc.
Slipped Disc isn't half bad for a promotional compilation album. It starts off with Tom Cochrane's single Life Is A Highway. It includes three well done cover songs: the Ugly Kid Joe version of Cats In The Cradle, the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of the Jimi Hendrix classic Fire, and The Pixies 1991 cover of Head On from The Jesus And Mary Chain. It also has Tones Of Home, which is the first single released by Blind Melon, and an excellent song that was overshadowed by the success of No Rain, as well as Just the Way It Is Baby, which was the first hit single by The Rembrandts and pre-dates their unfortunate decision to record the theme song to Friends. The final two songs on the CD are I Don't Want Your Love by Duran Duran, and an incredible song Sleeping Satellite by an artist that I know almost nothing about named Tasmin Archer. This was her debut single which went to the top of the charts in the UK, but I don't remember hearing it on the radio in the US. It's a shame that it didn't get more exposure over here because it's a damn good song and it closes out a pretty great collection of music.
If you were on a long car trip in the 90's and could only have one CD in the car, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Slipped Disc. There are probably a few hundred different ways to hear each of these songs today, but if you want to relive the experience of a mall-shopping Crystal Pepsi drinker from the summer of '93, you can find plenty them for sale for just a couple of bucks on eBay.
