This. I mean, as fulfilling as your appreciation for well-crafted tv is, it’s not edible.
Not a whoosh. I’m just late to the party I guess.
I just recently got a 55" HDTV. So guess that shines a spotlight on things that weren’t completely obvious to me before.
Or in the case of Soap Operas, the genre as a whole was named after them.
Actually, it hasn’t. Believe me, I would have noticed–the spouse works for Apple, so we definitely notice the Apple products in the show (there have been a lot of them–Sherlock prominently uses an iPhone and an iMac, but they’re in the background. As far as I know, Apple doesn’t pay for product placements–or at least they didn’t used to. Producers just like using them in the show.) Having Sherlock whipping out his Surface, doing that cutesy little “click” thing with the kickstand, and making a show of attaching his bright red keyboard just pissed me off. Not that he was using the Surface, but that he made such a big deal out of using it.
They didn’t lose me as a viewer–I still like the show–but my respect for Sherlock went down a few notches. Nothing against folks who like the Surface, but I’m pretty sure most people who show a marked affinity for Apple products (as Sherlock seems to) wouldn’t buy a Surface. It would have been more realistic to have him use an Android tablet instead.
For some reasons, I think those are hilarious. Each brand has it’s own take off a real brand. Here’s the entire list.
I can’t find the link right now, but I think it was Hawaii Five-O that practically did a subway commercial during the episode. Found it.
I was fine with the blatantness of Chuck. The show was on the bubble of being canceled perpetually and the team pretty much acknowledged that without the product placement they would have surely not been able to continue. I think the obviousness of it was part of the joke.
Survivor is the same way, everyone knows it’s blatant product placement but it’s what keeps the lights on.
You can buy those brand lookalikes from any theater prop company. It’s not like they’re putting a lot of effort into it.
The episode of Suburgatory mentioned above actually seemed to go out of its way to not mention the exact tablet she was using. I assumed it was because they did not get any product placement.
The sponsorship which Staples has with “The Office” extends to Staples selling Dunder Mifflin brand copy paper. 
How about the “30 Rock” product placement for the movie “Hot Tub Time Machine”?
Liz: I’m sorry. You have a problem with the science of Hot Tub Time Machine?
Wesley Snipes: Yeah, not the time travel. It’s the hot tub. You don’t just turn one on and it’s immediately hot. I should know, I’ve been in a hot tub two times.
Agreed. That’s along the same lines as people at a bar ordering “a beer.”
That was more common in radio than TV. TV game shows usually had the name of the sponsor prominently listed throughout the show, but dramatic/comedy shows didn’t.
It always makes me chuckle if I notice it. It doesn’t bother me.
Remember Heroes? “Nissan Versa! Nissan Versa!”
As for the “not really a product”, the winner has to be Dexter. If you look closely, it’s clear they have someone mocking up UI for their computers and iPhones. It’s not the Mac OS, but it’s close. I spend those scenes looking at the fake UI and wondering why they bothered.
Chuck was running on fumes for most of its lifetime, i think they kept going by constantly shelling for subway. I miss Chuck 
Don’t forget the Christmas episode where Claire & Haley spent at Target.
I have a multi-DVD set of old TV commercials, and it has lots of examples of that. It stopped when sponsors stopped buying entire shows - you can see product logos on the closing credits of some of them.
And yes the reason for this coming back is for advertisers to force you to see the products in a way that you can’t fast forward through. Though I fast forward through most shows, fast enough that I don’t even see them.
The Adventures of Pete and Pete dealt with this by having all product be made by the Kreb company. Krebstar flashlights, cans of Creamed Corn had the Kreb label, and there were even KrebScouts.
There was an episode of Royal Pains, just after HP released their ill-fated tablet (TouchPad, IIRC), where the normally low-tech Hank suddenly had to use a tablet to get medical information. The logo was *painfully *obvious.
Yes, that one bothers me. They even use the standard iPhone text alert sound, but then when Dexter types in CU, it’s clearly a fake OS. It was really obvious in last week’s episode.
They also have a deal with the grocery store Wegmans. All of the food in the break room is Wegmans brand, which is actually ridiculously accurate for businesses located in the same city as a Wegmans.