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Former Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida says the PlayStation marketing team had to completely redesign Crash Bandicoot in PS1 commercials because he was too ugly for the Japanese market
Sony's Japanese marketing team redesigned Crash Bandicoot for the 1996 release, altering his eye color to brown, thinning his eyebrows, and making his fur appear more plastic to appeal to the Japanese market. A catchy commercial song further aided his localization.
Sorry to get personal so quickly but, do you think Crash Bandicoot is handsome? The Japanese PlayStation marketing team certainly didn't, so they guided the publisher toward redesigning the unsightly creature for local commercials around the game's 1996 release.
"The eyes were green," former Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida says about Crash Bandicoot in a new interview with gaming personality Kyle Bosman. "The, you know, [he] had a really, uh, thick, um – what was the name of this part? Eyebrows. And that was a bit scary."
To tame the bipedal marsupial's deviant ways – and hairs – Yoshida recalls asking his marketing team to change Crash's eye color to brown, "like Japanese people, and […] you make the eyebrows thinner." Naturally. There is no point to empathizing with an unbalanced marsupial like that poor bastard Crash if he doesn't at least share your eye color.
As a triumphant brown eye-haver myself, I know that I'd rather not look at things like babies, for example, if they have green eyes, because it reminds me too much of olives and makes me really hungry for tapenade. And, like, I don't even like tapenade.
You see my issue. But Crash had bigger problems. As we've established, "Crash was hairy, right?" Yoshida continues. "On the surface. And that’s a bit scary – looks like an animal. So we asked [the marketing team], can you make it a bit, […], for our marketing materials, make it really plastic? Like a shiny skin?"
So they exfoliated their superstar until his flesh sparkled like a fresh can of Pepsi. Oh, and one more thing, toots: if you want to make it in this business, you're gonna have to change your name.
"I had amazing marketer in Japan," Yoshida says, "and she said that, 'What's Crash Bandicoot? Crash is fine, but 'Bandicoot' – no one in Japan have heard about this word, 'Bandicoot.' So, let's make a song for the TV commercial."
What seems to be the final commercial – preserved on YouTube in low quality – depicts Crash as a triangle-nosed piece of gum with supermodel eyebrows and a guitar. He looks like something that would get stuck in my teeth, but Yoshida tells Bosman that the commercial "worked."
And so, another case of pretty privilege gets added to the history books. Crash may have been a three in Japan, but, for the rest of the world, he's at least also a three.