Regarding the Subway chain, it was featured in the Coneheads movie back in 1993.
I think at this point, Subway has become known for their product placement so they just lean into it. Like, if some characters are just happening to be eating Subway people are going to call it out anyway, so why not just make it a full on ad?
The thing that makes me think it’s likely paid product placement is the fact that the products appear to have been carefully placed so their labels are facing the camera, so the audience can easily identify the product. I would think if was merely set dressing they would have been placed more randomly, like how a normal person would set a can on a counter.
Isn’t it usually more in the foreground? I mean, I wouldn’t have seen that can of Pam while watching the show, unless a cast member had picked it up and used it with the label visible. Same thing for the nuts.
I’m going to go with this one. I remember an episode (the one where Penny gets fired from Serial Ape-ist 2) where she, Leonard and Wil Wheaton are drinking in a bar and we got into an argument over what beers they were drinking based on bottle shape and neck label. Out of the three bottles, one of them should have been towards the camera enough to read the label. But no. So apparently Sierra Nevada didn’t want to pay up for placement.
Re Big Bang Theory
Did they have a deal with Warner Brothers/ DC Comics?
I remember plenty of cosplay, t shirts and props of DC characters but OTTOMH no Marvel.
Iron Man helmet in “The Parking Spot Escalation.”
There was also Stuart’s earlier quote:
Stuart: Okay, if you’re going to question the importance of an actor’s signature on a plastic helmet from a movie based on a comic book, then all of our lives have no meaning!
Not to mention the extended argument between the girls about Thor. “You don’t know his life!”
After some thinking, I remembered an autographed pair of Hulk hands, an appearance by Stan Lee and a bet ending in forfeiture of the first appearance of Galactus. So, it could be that my memory is faulty. Nevermind.
I believe they’ve only started delivery since the pandemic in order to keep their stores open and people employed which apparently worked which is why you can now still order it delivered. But at the time of Free Birds it wasn’t true.
One night in a hotel in a strange town (familiar to us, but always strange in its odd ways) we ordered from a bluesy place that refused to take our web order, so the search for dinner finally alit on about the only place left open. The chain at which two characters from a previously mentioned long-running TV series were waitresses for about half of the series.
It was not my choice, but it was open. How bad could it be?
It was passing bad. Everything they delivered to us was liberally seasoned with wrongness and incompetence (which is one reason I refrain from using the name). Even the desserts, which one would guess from the name are their speciality, were ungood. How they stay in business baffles me.
I have heard that Disney’s “Love Bug” series deliberately referred to Herbie as “the little car” because they didn’t want to mention a manufacturer’s name. And that’s what they call the car throughout the movies. Except – there was one scene where the car was floating in the Pacific Ocean and the actress called the car a Volkswagon.
How sad must your local food choices be that you’re ordering food from Chuck E Cheese for delivery?
Walter Kelly, who drew the comic strip Pogo, wrote of a fellow cartoonist who had one of his characters purchase a car, giving the brand name in the cartoon. For several weeks the character remarked how much he liked the car and described the luxurious features. Then the cartoonist contacted the auto company and said - “Well, what about it?” The auto company thanked him but didn’t offer to supply a car, give him a discount, or other compensation. In the next week’s cartoon, the character had a minor accident which caused the car to disintegrate.
But, for the most awkward product placement, Men in Black. Tommy Lee Jones shows Will Smith their car, and Will Smith loudly calls it as a “POS FORD”. (And he didn’t mean Police Option Special.)
Posters lack of experience with the advertising biz is touching. It’s all about money and varying competing theories of maximizing the extraction there of. I remember one day Millie taking off to go home and watch some soap opera. In one scene, there was a photo in a picture frame on a table that was large enough in the shot to be recognizable. She spotted it, rushed back to the office to check the files to make sure they hadn’t paid for its use, and put on her lawyer hat to write them a stern letter. A week later a check arrived in the mail. For probably three seconds use of a photo that had been in the frame when they bought it.
As for awkward product placement, I nominate the Sony monitor enhanced logo during the OJ trial. After a few days of criticism, the logo magically went back to being very subdued.
At least in early seasons the comic book shop they visit in The Big Bang Theory notably had no Marvel superheroes comics or merchandise featured, which is odd as this was especially when the MCU was taking off big time but I remember they always just had a Superman statue. It shouldn’t be a big surprise that Warner Brothers (which owns DC, Marvels competition) makes the series this they would have absolutely no interest in promoting their competition, so it’s more of a lack of product placement that’s awkward.
I never made that connection (Warner Bros/DC) but I did notice and think it a bit unusual that the guys always sat around talking/dressing like DC superheroes nearly exclusively, even when the MCU was up and going. I would have figured that at some point, they’d have had some Avengers-related stuff.
But the Warner Bros/DC connection explains it.
My understanding is that was true only for the first movie. The way I heard it was Volkswagen was worried Disney would portray the car in a way that would be bad for their image, so they wouldn’t let them mention the name Volkswagen, and made them replace the emblems with plain circles. When the first movie was wildly successful VW had a change of heart when they realized what a great marketing opportunity it was for them, and allowed them to use their name and logo in the sequels.
I feel the need to present this scene from the underrated Return of the Killer Tomatoes.
I have a can of tomatoes autographed by John Astin. He also added “Dr Gangrene’s Seal Of Disapproval” and the words “Don’t Eat Fool!”
I’d post pictures but I’m not sure where the can is right now.
I came in here to say this exact thing. I shouldn’t be surprised someone beat me to it; talk about cringeworthy!