I didn’t like the first episode of Angie Tribeca so I stopped watching but it was a comedy in the style of Police Squad! So I assume they had fun with the Little Caesar’s ad.
This is doubtless the strangest product placement I’ve ever seen. It’s a 1953 promotional film for Eastern Air Lines “hosted” by radio/TV superstar Arthur Godfrey. But midway into the promotion for Eastern, Godfrey decides to do a little extra promotion for one of his favorite sponsors.
Similar is the 30 Rock Snapple scene:
He also uttered a phrase that got us started eating a whole new ethnicity of food.
At the end of The Avengers, Iron Man’s been thrown back into our universe (by an atomic bomb, which as you know is the preferred way to pull that off). After he’s lying, barely breathing, on the streets of a devastated Manhattan, he mumbles…
Ironman:
What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.Captain America:
We won.Ironman:
All right, yay. Hurray. Good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I want to try it.
Then at the last minute, they added a post-credits scene with the Avengers so tired they can barely move, but they’re eating shawarma at a little hole-in-the-wall place in NYC.
After the movie, my wife said “I don’t know what it is, but I want to try it.” And, though the only place that has it in town is inside a gas station, we loaded up… and now it’s one of our favorite take-out meals.
True, but it was the most egregious example from it.
Yet more from Iron Man 2 and 3. Oracle seems to have put money in. In Iron Man 2 Tony Stark introduces Larry Ellison as “the Oracle of Silicon Valley.” I can swear Downey was grimacing. In 3 there was an Oracle symbol on the barn Stark was hiding out in, and someone mentions the Oracle cloud.
The upside was that I was working for Oracle at the time and the rented a multiplex so that all employees could go see it. With a free soda, popcorn and 3D glasses, and on work time.
There was an old TV series called the FBI in the '70s with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was sponsored by Ford. Not only were all the cars driven by the cast Fords, every car parked along the street or city roads were also Fords. Once you caught on to that is was impossible to not see. An alternate universe where there were only Fords.
That product placement really worked for it to be done twice in this thread…
The original “DeGrassi High” series had Dipps granola bars displayed, or their advertising, at pretty much every opportunity.
I think what bothered me so much about the awkwardness of it on The Patient is not only how clumsy and cringy it was, but the nature of the show. I expect the cars and the soft drinks, and usually they don’t call too much attention to themselves unless the show is trying to justify the sell out by calling attention to it and mocking themselves. But a clumsy bit, with a forced dialogue brand name call out, in a show that is otherwise trying to be a serious psychodrama (with horror elements), it really stands out.
Well, that was period practice. On The Jack Benny Program, the action would stop dead for a minute every week while the characters expounded on the virtues of Jell-O or some other sponsor.
The neon-sign sequence in Love Happy is notorious, though it traditionally given a pass because 1, they needed the money to finish the film, and, 2, it’s the most brilliant thing in the whole picture.
And then there were the instances of Zima and a Kawasaki Ninja on Babylon 5.
The soap Days of Our Lives used to do weird product placements all the time.
First up, Wanchai Ferry Chinese food. The older lady owns a pub/restaurant, but she’s serving brand name food.
Second, Cheerios
Third, Midol.
Finally, Chex Mix
The Julia Roberts vehicle Runaway Bride had the clunkiest, most blatant and I suspect counterproductive placement I’ve even seen.
She escapes from one of her nuptials in a Fedex van; someone says “where is she going?” To Hector Elizondo’s eternal shame he drops the clunker: “I don’t know, but she’ll get there by 10:30 tomorrow” or whatever Fedex’s current campaign byline was.
I don’t think I even saw that as product placement at the time. I feel like it was a very 90’s thing to have someone sarcastically say a slogan.
Leverage must have had the same deal. ‘Bing it’ was very awkward.
Burn Notice clearly had a deal with Hyundai. Lots of artistic shots of the car emblem, especially during the car chases.
Also, the beer bottles normally had the same fake tv labels except for the occasional weeks that Bud would sponsor them. It stood out because it was rare.
Well, there was that time on I Love Lucy where Lucy dressed up as Phillip Morris and climbed inside the TV.
The TV show, “Family” used Fords also. In one episode the mom had been having dreams about an “evil” car. I can’t recall the exact details but it was small and bright red, I think. The family car had to go in for service and dad brought home the loaner. Mom goes to the driveway to take the loaner to the store and “OH No - it’s the evil car!” It was was a bright red Chevrolet Vega.
Come for the promotion, stay for the Connie.
sad thing is she was right … vegas’ sucked in every possible way