Name Your Baby Turok

The old Acclaim Entertainment was infamous in its later years for various marketing stunts.  The company created BMX XXX, a game whose selling point was almost entirely the nudity contained therein, and Acclaim also made a hoax where they said they would buy advertising space on tombstones to promote Shadow Man: 2econd Coming. Yet one campaign  (that was actually real) and raised more than a couple of eyebrows was the "Name Your Baby Turok" contest.

As a promotion for Turok: Evolution, Acclaim offered up $10,000 in U.S. savings bonds to any set of parents that would legally name their baby after the titular dinosaur hunter.  The cash was given to the first infant born on September 1, 2002, the release day of Turok: Evolution, that was named Turok.

"Knowing how hard it is for parents to decide on a strong name for their child, we thought of an innovative way to solve this dilemma and help jump start their savings for the future," said Tom Bass, Senior Brand Manager at Acclaim at the time. "While names like Michael and Hannah are very popular, they hardly instill fear in the hearts of playground bullies and closet monsters, and we're thrilled to give one lucky child the bold power of the Turok name."  

The promotion got people talking, but it mostly caused sniggering from gamers and remarks about how Acclaim must be getting desperate; the observations of gamers proved apt, as Acclaim shut down two years later. We knew someone who proposed an idea for an ad campaign for a game called "Dead on Impact" where corpses would be throw out of planes covered in flyers... we're kind of glad that the old Acclaim isn't around anymore because we're pretty sure they'd think this was an awesome idea.