Supermarkets and FMCG brands had gamers firmly in their sights this week for the midnight launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on Monday.

Retailers have been merchandising energy drinks and beer alongside the blockbuster first-person shooter.

Brands including Red Bull, Monster and Stella Artois have featured as part of massive in-store displays for the 18- certificate game in Tesco, while Red Bull rolled out dual-merchandising units featuring the energy drink and the game to 200 Asda stores.

Red Bull was among the brands that sent teams to Asda’s top 25 stores to hand out energy drinks to queuing gamers as they waited until midnight to buy the new game.

Non-food brands also got in on the act, with Wilkinson Sword producing 28,000 packs with a Hydro 5 Razor to give away to men who bought Black Ops 2 at one of the late-night events at Asda stores. Their ‘wives and girlfriends’ were offered ‘girly’ goodie bags containing the Wilkinson Sword Quattro for Women, Hawaiian Tropic Lip-gloss and a bar of chocolate.

Black Ops 2 is tipped to be one of - if not the - biggest games of the year. Tesco has taken more pre-orders for it than any other title and staged its widest-ever midnight store openings, across 600 stores, 150 of which opened specially for the event.

Black Ops 2 came a week after the roll-out of Halo 4, which made more than $220m worldwide in 24 hours - prompting claims it was on track to be the biggest entertainment launch of the year.

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