The Most Unusually Controversial Glamour Model Photoshoot

There is nothing unusual about the use of glamour model photography in advertising, and these are often the source of some of the most creative and unusual shoots around.

Whilst it is only truly the case as Jef I Richards put it that sex sells if you are selling sex, many people know that it gets people’s attention and puts eyes not only on a beautiful model but also on a product, although how much they’ll remember one from the other is uncertain.

However, in the 1990s, a lot of glamour shots used in advertising proved not only to be popular but also strangely controversial, with one of the most infamous perhaps being Jo Guest’s saucy photoshoot for the computer game Battlecruiser 3000AD by Derek Smart and GameTek in 1996.

Featuring the model sitting on what looks to be an incredibly uncomfortable stool in black underwear and thigh-high boots, she bites her finger seductively and holds a large game box between her legs of the eponymous complex space exploration simulation game.

There were two versions of this advert, one which was just her and the game, with a second version airbrushing her knickers off and proclaiming that she “really wants” a computer game whose claim to fame was that it was part of one of the longest internet arguments in history.

It is far from the only use of glamour models in video game marketing, but it was possibly the most nakedly obvious (to pardon a pun).

It got a lot of attention, but also proved to be a tipping point, as whilst it did get a lot of attention, much of it was highly critical, particularly when the game was poorly reviewed, and eventually a complaint to the Advertising Standards Agency was upheld.

It even received an exceptionally 1990s parody by GameTek’s rival THQ, and whilst it hardly stopped glamour models from appearing in adverts for video games, they tended to appear in far more creative advertising material.