This 1985 Diet Coke Commercial Had Weird Al, Kim Carnes, James Coco, and the Ghostbusters Ghost

Weird Al in a red jacket, James Coco with loose pants, Kim Carnes singing, and the Ghostbuster Icon Ghost get together to sell Diet Coke.

The mid-eighties were a fun time for cola marketing. Pepsi was bringing celebrities to the party and calling themselves the choice of a new generation. Meanwhile, Coke was trying to recover from the New Coke debacle and was spending heavily on marketing with numerous properties and personalities. After the New Coke backlash, Coke seemed to double down on using familiar pop culture faces to stay relevant. This resulted in a series of Diet Coke ads that brought together an interesting, and sometimes strange, mix of celebrities. There were ads with DEVO and Andy Warhol, Walter Payton and Ray Parker Jr., Chuck Berry and Martin Mull, and more. My favorite, though, was the one that featured the great "Weird Al" Yankovic wearing a Michael Jackson outfit while singing the praises of everyone’s favorite diet soda.

Throughout the history of music parody artists rarely broke into the mainstream, Al’s wide appeal made him an unexpected but effective brand partner. Now, I consider Weird Al the star of the commercial, but he is not the first to appear. That honor goes to the singer Kim Carnes. This was a big year for her. Earlier in the year, she was on the Billboard Hot 100 with three singles at the same time. These included the songs "What About Me," "Make No Mistake, He's Mine," and "Invitation to Dance" from the soundtrack to That's Dancing. It was a fun chart moment where she appeared as a solo artist, and as part of both a duo and a trio. That kind of run made her a big deal, which is why Coca-Cola hired her to appear in some ads on her own.

After the intro by Kim, Al appears just as they announce the name of the product. The shot is from a distance and he is wearing Michael Jackson’s iconic red leather jacket. He does a convincing dance move, then spins around to reveal himself as a visual punchline. You thought you were getting MJ, but instead, wink wink, it’s Weird Al.

Modern audiences watching this might just see it as a fun reference to Al’s hit parody of “Beat It,” called “Eat It.” Both songs were huge and widely known at the time, but there was even more going on. A year earlier, Jackson had signed a major deal to appear in Pepsi commercials. He had made headlines for being in their ads, but he also made even bigger headlines after a pyrotechnic accident during a shoot at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Jackson was badly burned. For a month, it was on the news constantly. It was a terrible event, but also a flood of free publicity for both Jackson and Pepsi.

Modern viewers might just see Al in a red jacket and think of “Eat It” and leave it at that. But the full context adds something more. The strong connection between Jackson and Pepsi made Al’s parody-style appearance in a Coke ad a well-placed move.

Carnes and Weird Al are not the only celebrities we see. After a quick sequence that includes a woman lounging in a pool being spied on by a periscope, some young people playing hacky sack, and a Diet Coke branded one-man band in a straw hat (who I thought was Richard Simmons for a long time), we get a smiling man dancing while holding his waistband. You might not recognize him, but this is award-winning character actor James Coco.

Coco had struggled with his weight for years and often spoke about his failed attempts to keep it off. In the eighties, he finally found success and documented the process in his best-selling book The James Coco Diet. I think he was added a nod to an older audience. As a kid watching this, I might have recognized his face from TV, but older people would have known him by name.

The weight loss, combined with the book and his many appearances on talk shows and in the news at the time, made him an ideal person to promote a diet soda. Just seeing him dance with his now loose pants sends a message that you might lose weight too, if only you drink Diet Coke. Sadly, he died not long after the ad aired, passing away in 1987 at the age of 56.

After Coco, we get another quick sequence. A group of people enjoying Diet Coke, including a non-Michael Jackson Weird Al eating pizza, a guy on a unicycle, two college kids near a Coke machine, James Coco drinking from a glass bottle, and finally, the Ghostbusters logo ghost.

The Ghostbusters ghost, also called the icon ghost, is the one in the crossed-out symbol. Nicknamed Mooglie by Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd, though never officially called that, it only shows up in the logo during the films. It got a bit more action in the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, the cereal commercial, and a few other places.

As a fan of the movie, I was excited to see the ghost appear. It felt special and it was fun to see him animated. The movie had been a huge hit the year before. The real reason the ghost showed up, though, is corporate synergy. Coca-Cola owned the studio behind Ghostbusters, Columbia Pictures. It’s a small moment, but it shows how much effort Coke was putting into connecting every pop culture dot they could.

This 30-second ad packed in more cultural references than most movies. Both Coke and Pepsi were looking to to grab attention with celebrities, but while Pepsi focused on single-star advertising, Coke embraced a more MTV-style quick cut format. Which I think worked really well for the time. From Kim Carnes to Weird Al to the Ghostbusters ghost, it was Coke’s way of showing they still had pop culture power. If you are watching this for the first time today, it might look like just a fun time capsule of the mid-eighties, but back then, the references were a lot more meaningful.