For some reason this week, I searched for the Godzilla Vs. Charles Barkley Nike commercial on YouTube. I remember this ad being a big deal when I was a kid.

From Wikipedia:

Godzilla vs. Charles Barkley was conceived by advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy and produced by Industrial Light & Magic. It was originally intended for Japanese audiences, but Nike was impressed enough to use it in the United States, where it debuted on September 9, 1992 during the MTV Video Music Awards broadcast on MTV.

The commercial required eight days of filming during the first two weeks in June 1992 and four weeks of editing thereafter. It employs suitmation techniques, which were still being used in the Godzilla films being made by Toho. Clint Goodman of ILM explained, "The idea was that we would show a modern look, but not with total 'ILM realism'. It just wouldn't be true to the subject matter." The Godzilla costume comprised many foam rubber pieces, and puppeteers produced the monster's facial expressions with radio control devices. Some of the building props in the commercial were originally used in the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The special effects team used mattes to create the illusion of a larger city.

I don't watch much TV these days, so I'm not sure if ads are ever the events that Godzilla Vs. Barkley was. This commercial was so big, it even had a commercial to promote it. And the promotional commercial was as long as the actual commercial. That's like a 90-minute movie trailer.

Crazy.