Not a member? Sign up now
March 1, 2010
Ten Profoundly Unsubtle Instances of Movie Product Placement
We love the Power Glove.
By James Greene, Jr.
Ever since Howard Hughes plugged Hershey in his 1927 air spectacular Wings, product placement has been a fact of life in mainstream cinema. Sometimes, films manage to seamlessly integrate brand names — see E.T., which introduced America to an adorable alien with a penchant for Reese's Pieces. Here are ten product placements that aren't so seamless.
1. Little Trees in Repo Man (1984)
This cult classic gave the finger to product placement by stocking its world almost entirely with generic-brand food products. At one point, the titular character even opens a can that's just marked "FOOD", leaving the audience to imagine what kind of Grade F hoofs-n'-horns meat he's ingesting. Every car in this vehicular extravaganza features a pine-shaped air freshener, leading many to believe that Repo Man received financial support from Little Trees. Director Alex Cox emailed us to explain that between the filmmakers and Little Trees, no money changed hands, but a number of air fresheners did. Every Little Tree used was also scent-free, says Cox, because no one could handle the smell.
2. McDonald's in Mac & Me (1988)
This E.T. rip-off features a ten-minute spontaneous dance number, set at a McDonald's and featuring Ronald McDonald, assorted Mickey D's employees, and a man in a bear costume. When have you ever seen anyone at McDonald's happy enough to break out into song? There's also a fair amount of Coke-guzzling in Mac & Me, which is almost enough to distract from the slimy, bulbous alien they're trying to pass off as cute.
3. Sony Walkman in Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
The Ghostbusters are scientists, but even they need corporate help to animate the Statue of Liberty. Enter the Sony Walkman, prominently displayed as part of the MacGuyver-like set-up Egon and his pals use to go all Frankenstein on Lady Liberty. It should come as no surprise that media giant Sony had acquired Columbia Pictures, the studio behind Ghostbusters 2, the very year the film came out.
4. Nintendo in The Wizard (1989)
A lazy rehash of Tommy without the awesome music, The Wizard tells the tale of a little imp who runs away from home to compete in a giant Nintendo tournament. Along the way, he encounters every item in the Nintendo catalogue (including the Power Glove, which another character praises, in the parlance of the time, as "so bad"). Not even the presence of squinty hunk Christian Slater could distract audiences from some brief footage of the then-unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3.
5. Target in Career Opportunities (1991)
A landmark in product placement, in that it centralized the action inside the product — in this case, a Target retail store. It had everything a 1991 audience could hope for — gratuitous Jennifer Connelly cleavage, gratuitous Fine Young Cannibals on the soundtrack, and gratuitous jokes about a plethora of useful items easily found in any convenient Target location.
Commentarium (50 Comments)
Wow. These are shameless!
I can't believe nobody mentioned Wayne's World yet!
What, no Talkboy in Home Alone 2? I'm convinced that product was made simply so they could promote it in that film for resale.
Man, that Power Glove IS bad. I had a Talkboy too, that thing was also quite radical.
Bonus points for the Power Glove buttons quoting "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." But good lord, that clip encapsulated so many things I hated about the 1980s.
The worst I've ever seen is in the Ethan Hawke "Hamlet". The "to be or not to be" soliloquy is given in a Blockbuster video store that can't let you forget for a moment that it's a Blockbuster store--including the wall of 72 or so video boxes bearing just the big BB logo. Unfortunately, the vid on YouTube cuts off the end, with its happy BB employee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YHMYkUrV7A
My nomination is the Coke machine in Independence Day - and the MacIntosh, to boot.
And in "The Paper," I think it was called, with Glenn Close. They were newspaper reporters, and none of them drank coffee! They just had a big Coke machine right on the newsroom floor. And the head editor/publisher guy? He's quitting caffeine, so he drinks Minute Maid orange soda. Also a Coke product. We all screamed at the screen so much I'm surprised I have any recollection of what the movie itself was about.
A Mac saving the world is product placement?
To continue the, here's one you didn't mention! trend: iPod and Mac in Blade: Trinity.
Mac and Me = CLASSIC
How about McDonald's in The Fifth Element.
sooooo, what products they should use in movies??? Thats where some of the budget for filming these came from....
Not a movie, but there's basically a commercial for Hyundai in almost every episode of Leverage.
not to mention will smith's kickass audi in i robot. i so want one of those 20 years from now.
Also noteworthy - the piano player singing jingles in the Demolition Man Taco Bell scene is the lead singer of the Crash Test Dummies. That may be the most accurate prediction this movie makes.
WRONG!!! It is actor Dan Cortese....
The UN in "The Interpreter"
Live free or Die Hard has repeated references to Lojack, Gears of Wars 2, and Nokia. Lojack is even a major plot point.
Tropicana juice in 'Unbreakable'.
Robert Zemeckis directed "Cast Away", not Ron Howard.
Of the many things to dislike Cast Away, the worst is directly tied to the FedEx placement – after years away from our corporate, branded, consumer culture the hero has set himself free & reconstituted himself as a simpler, truer man. But when he gets back to that world? He not only doesn't question it, he re-embraces it! What could have been an interesting critique of our time instead is just a boring celebration of it, with an interlude of the cinema spectacle of celebrity/"everyman" Tom Hanks getting nutty for a while. Nothing is questioned. Nothing is changed.
Pull-ups (diapers) in 2012....absolute worst.
Ghostbusters yes, but for the amount of smoking the characters did. I never nitced all those years ago, but I certainly did when we played for my daughters the other night.
Dan Cortese from MTV was the Taco Bell singer, not the lead singer of The Crash Test Dummies. His name is Brad Roberts.
Also, in Leonard Part 6, Bill Cosby moves a can of Coke so you are looking directly at the logo after he turns it.
What about Reese's Pieces in E.T?
Yes JK. It is.
Murphy's Romance had blatant Coca-Cola placements; it featured an outdoor festival with EVERYTHING festooned with Coke banners.
Things like Wayne's World, Crazy People, and Josie and the Pussycats don't really count in this category; they're so over the top that they're lampooning product placement.
Ron Howard did NOT direct Cast Away. Robert Zemiekis did. A LITTLE effort here folks.
ROTFL, thats too funny dude.
Lou
www.complete-anonymity.at.tc
Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle
What? no Big Mac reference from Houseguest? made me want one after I left the theater.
Tons of COKE placements in The Paper
How about James Bond driving a T-55 tank through a truck full of Perrier mineral water in "Goldeneye"?
How about the Nike "swoosh" in A Knight's Tale on Heath Ledger's armor..
"Cast Away" is not a Ron Howard film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis. Lazy, just Lazy.
What about Idiocracy, brought to you by Carl's Jr.?
IRobot has more than one product placement, look at the car (Audi I think), USR Robotics, the stereo system that they zoomed into in his house. The whole movie feels like a big ad.
The worst I have ever seen was the Dell placement in "The Shipping News"
what about Transformers? GM cars, Mountain Dew, Xbox and Nokia
Transformers is pitiful. There are products that are so apart of society that they cross from being product placement to just the standard. hate apple but the ipod does this and the phrase "google it" is in the same vein
In Cast Away's defense, they've said many times that they didn't receive a dime for product placement. They actually had to ask permission and show FedEx what they had of the script to be allowed to use their name, they just didn't want to make up some fake name since it was going to play such an important part in the story. Of course that could all be a lie, but I'd trust that coming from Robert Zemeckis (not Ron Howard), over the people who made I, Robot or The Island (tons of product placement in this one) for instance.
Movie Evolution was pretty much a Head and Shoulders commercial.
Where The Heart Is with Natalie Portman should have been in here. The whole movie revolves around Portman giving birth in Walmart/getting married in Walmart! I think that might be pushing the bill a bit.
The Pierce Brosnan Bond movies eventually turned into infomercials for cars, glasses, watches, etc. The absolute worst was when Bond goes to pick up his tricked-out BMW at an Avis - and Q is dressed in an Avis jacket.
Did No-one notice the plot relying on Huggies Diapers in the Cohen Brothers' "Raising Arizona"?
Sony (Including Sony Ericsson and Sony Vaio) adverts EVERYWHERE in Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace.
Not that i'm complaining, Sony probably fronted most of the bill for these two fantastic films. Might not have happened without them, bear that in mind for all films on this list!
Burger King in Iron Man? Can you get any more blatant?
Josie and The Pussycats?!! That movie was one monster product placement.
And I was just woendrnig about that too!
I enjoyed this, great stuff! Stop by and say hi sometime windermere hotels