That Time the Former Soviet President Starred in a Pizza Hut Commercial
The ad aired in the U.S. on January 1, 1998, during that year’s annual Rose Bowl game between the #1 Michigan Wolverines and the #8 Washington State Cougars. Michigan ended up winning 21-16.
It opens in a snow-covered Red Square, where a man in a black overcoat and hat walks beside his very young granddaughter. Eventually they head inside a single-story Pizza Hut restaurant in the imposing shadow of the Kremlin’s outer walls. A few seconds later, a middle-aged man loudly identifies him to the crowd of American pizza-loving Russians as Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president and premiere of the recently disbanded Soviet Union. The man angrily rises from his chair, and for the next few seconds, goes back and forth with a younger guy about, essentially, the legacy of their former leader.
‘Because of him, we have economic confusion!’
‘Because of him, we have opportunity.’
‘Because of him, we have political instability!’
‘Because of him, we have freedom.’
‘Complete chaos!’
‘Hope!’
Then an old woman diffuses the tension, and brings the whole thing together:
‘Because of him, we have many things, like Pizza Hut!’
The crowd cheers, and then, all in unison:
‘Hail to Gorbachev!’
Finally, a voice over, in English:
‘Sometimes, nothing brings people together better than a nice hot pizza from Pizza Hut.’
The recent Nobel Peace Prize winner (1990) was understandably reluctant, as was his wife Raisa, to do the ad when he was first approached by Pizza Hut’s marketing team in the summer of 1997, but ultimately, the hefty payout the company offered him for what would turn out to just be a few seconds of camera time convinced him it was worth the damage it would no doubt do to his reputation at home. He intended to put the money toward expanding his new think tank, the Gorbachev Foundation, whose purpose generally was to promote democratic reforms in government, and was then running multiple initiatives to improve the country’s education system.
He still had a few hard and fast demands, though. He refused to speak or eat pizza on screen; he would decide what he and his granddaughter would wear; and he’d have a final say over all the dialogue in the restaurant scene. He didn’t want to be caricatured. It was risky enough to be in it at all.
The whole thing was shot on site at the Red Square Pizza Hut in Moscow, but even still, the Russian government refused to broadcast it. Too controversial. Western audiences loved it, though, but mostly just for the novelty of it all. It would go on to appear on Time Magazine’s list of the Top 10 Most Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials, published 23 and 21 years after they named him Man of the Year for enacting the social and economic reforms - Glasnost and Perestroika - the two Russians are arguing about in the ad.
The other 9 infamous commercials, in no particular order:
Bruce Willis, Seagram’s Wine Coolers – 1986
Jason Alexander, McDonald’s McDLT – 1985
Charles Barkley, Taco Bell – 2010 (Super Bowl XLIV)
Tina Fey, Mutual Savings Bank – 1995
Orson Welles, G&G Whiskey (Nikka) – 1979
Luke Wilson, AT&T – circa 2003
M. Night Shyamalan, American Express – 2006 (aired during Oscars)
Keanu Reeves, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes – 1987
Mr. T, FlavorWave Oven Turbo - circa 2008
Gorbachev never even so much as mentioned his small role in the ad in any interview he gave for the rest of his life, which ended in 2022, the same year, coincidentally, Pizza Hut formally pulled out of Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine…
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