Remember the ’90s? Epic Games sure does, and the company channeled that totally radical decade with a new ad promoting the new Slurp Rush map for Fortnite Reload. Featuring the talents of Eric Andre and Kyle Mooney, the ad is an homage to those commercials from the 1990s that were trying to sell disgusting sugary beverages and snacks to kids.
The defunct soft drink Surge, which was advertised in the late ’90s with the tagline “Feed the Rush,” is a specific target of parody here, but this type of ad was very common throughout that whole decade for pretty much anything that was aimed at kids, including those sugar-filled drinks and candy (like Gushers), as well as toys.
The reason for this ad’s existence is to promote Fortnite’s Reload mode, a battle royale mode which allows players to respawn automatically as long as one member of their team is alive, and takes place on relatively small islands that are based on past chapters of the main Fortnite battle royale. Earlier this week, Reload launched its third map, Slurp Rush, which is based on the Chapter 2 island. To celebrate the launch, Slurp Rush is the only Reload map you can play on right now, but after this period of exclusivity ends it will rotate every half-hour along with the existing two maps.
Reload, which was released last summer after a very brief development period, has firmly established itself as Fortnite’s second-most-popular mode, far outpacing the player counts for the permanent OG mode that launched in December.
April has been a busy month for Fortnite between the Slurp Rush launch and the beginning of Sabrina Carpenter season in Fortnite Festival last week. But just wait–things are about to get even wilder in May as we look forward to the heavily-rumored Star Wars season that is expected to be revealed at Star Wars Celebration in Japan on Saturday.
