Throwbacks

I’m not a big soda fan and try to refrain from drinking it.  But my mother, being the huge Pepsi fan she is, was weirdly ecstatic when Pepsi started selling the “throwback” Pepsi bottles and cans that said they were made with real sugar. Pepsi also did this with their Mountain Dew product as well trying to appeal to the older generations that experienced having soda made with real sugar. To be complete honest with you, I can’t tell the difference between regular Pepsi and throwback Pepsi but my mother insisted on the difference and that the throwback Pepsi tastes way better. In some cases, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, etc. all believe that some things in the past are better than they are today. Take sports for example: everybody believes that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. I would have to agree with that statement but do you think that this is the general consensus because most people grew up watching MJ? It isn’t outrageous to think that LeBron James is the greatest player of all time but some of us think that way because we actually got to grow up watching him play.

The point that I’m making is that in advertising, companies will use this nostalgic technique of catering to our past experiences with the hopes of you buying their brand. One example is the new digitally remastered Disney movies. All of us grew up watching Snow White, Peter Pan, Pocahontas, etc. Now, Disney is taking movies from their “movie vault” and making their quality more up to date and with the times. Here is an advertisement for the movie Cinderella.

 

                This is a great advertising technique. We all loved Cinderella when we were kids now we get to watch it in high definition! The same thing happened with Pokémon. Everybody played Pokémon when they were little. Silver version and Gold Version were the two that I played all the time. Just recently, they released more up to date versions of Silver and Gold for the Nintendo DS. They called it Soul Silver and Heart Gold.

I’m not a big fan of things in the past. I’m more of a look to the future kind of guy. That is because I whole heartedly believe that too often we dwell on things in the past way too much. We like to look back and brag about things that we have done or experienced to make it look like we are awesome. A subtopic of my exegesis this semester is boasting and I whole heartedly believe what Paul says about boasting in Romans 5. “Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” Romans 5:2 (ESV). We may think that it is awesome to put ourselves up on a pedestal but we shouldn’t be boasting about our accomplishments. When something happens, whether good or bad, we need to boast in the Lord and His grace that He has poured out on us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We should be thankful for things that happened in the past and hope for what the Lord has in store for us in the future.