I don’t watch this show on a regular basis, but was the part where she shows off the intelligent parking assist on her Toyoto Prius at 15:30 a little over the top?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/233328/bones-the-pinocchio-in-the-planter
The video is only for the US, but I can imagine what it looks like. We’ve just made a game out of picking out the egregiously obvious advertising in shows - what else are you going to do?
I’ve been seeing more and more of this kind of thing over the past few years, mostly on broadcast TV shows. I don’t watch Bones, but my wife does and I’ve seen bits and parts of it, and it seems like they’re constantly doing something like this. Chuck is pretty bad about it too. I guess that if we’re not going to watch the normal commercials, they’ve got to find some way to sell us crap.
It keeps the shows on the air. It was like 20 seconds of a 42 minute show, beats them canning it for another singing & dancing competition.
Amen, brother. I’ll gladly put up with this stuff if it keeps a show I like on the air.
I’d agree to a certain extent. But it would limit the kind of shows they can put together.
If they are doing a historical show from say 100 years ago, a Toyota would look out of place.
I don’t mind it when its not so much a slap in the face - the one on bones == bad, the one they did on Fringe == not so bad (no one spoke about the feature - it was just there in a perfectly logical spot) - the ones the do on chuck fit in with the story and are very char centric == good.
Some shows do their blatant product placement ads so obviously that I’m pretty sure the actors and directors are winking at the camera.
I found the Fringe one just as jarring, with the way the camera framed the little monitor just perfectly, then the little close-up on the car logo at the end of the action.
The worst ones ever had to be on Heroes, where it was Versa this, Rogue that for two years.
Bones has been a big Toyota commercial for a while now. Any time they’re in a car, it’s a Toyota. And they make sure to zoom in on the Toyota emblem on the grille or the steering wheel for 5 seconds or so.
This is the second time I’ve seen it this blatant. Several episodes back, Hodgins strayed out of his lane on a 2-lane highway and an alarm started beeping in the car. Angela asked what was beeping, and Hodgins went into a lengthy explanation about how Toyota has a system that can warn you if you get out of your lane, etc.
I think it’s cute when they do that. Doesn’t bother me in the least. “Bones” seems to be the biggest practitioner of the shows I watch.
A few months ago, when the Windows Phone 7 came out, seems like all the Bones characters were suddenly toting Windows phones that week!
I’d have to say Bones is the worst at doing the product placement. Just showing it is no big deal. Mentioning it is a little bit bigger deal. On Bones though, they espouse the virtues of some feature as if they’re reading off the brochure. It just sounds so totally fake.
I don’t understand why though. Unlike Chuck, Bones gets pretty good ratings. They don’t need this to say on the air. I understand “anything to make an extra buck” but not if you’re hurting the show.
Bones also had a TERRIBLE one with a phone a few weeks ago. I don’t remember what kind of phone, so obviously it wasn’t very good product placement. 
Bones is the most blatant of the ones I watch. I find it amusing mostly. Toyota has done it twice that I remember.
“I’m going to use my MOTOROLA FLIP-PHONE WITH GPS CAPABILITY to phone the office while we drive around in our 2.0 LITRE 150 HORSEPOWER FOUR-DOOR TOYOTA BLAHBLAH!” Oh well. The tv shows are the extras; tv is all about the advertising, and we had best not forget it (plus they won’t let us).
It’s an arms race, people. With the advent of DVRs and people fast-forwarding through commercials, they’re going to have to find more intrusive ways of getting ads across.
You picked on Bones, but not the latest episode of Supernatural? That iPad got more screen-time than Eve did.
I’ve seen worse. I actually thought it was done tastefully.
Even The Wire made us use the word “Verizon” like we were Smurfs. “We need to Verizon Verizon Verizon!” “Did you Verizon?” “Verizon!”
They also did one for the Toyota Sienna. Angela and Daisy had to drive somewhere and it shows Daisy asking Angela why she had a Sienna, when something sportier would fit Angela’s personality better: wherein Angela praised the Sienna for being able to haul her artwork around.
I think this one either last season, or the one before.
J.