It’s been a while for me too so you could very well be right. My kids remember Sprite, though.
And they ain’t in it compared to Survivor. “Today’s reward challenge: the winners must use these tools from Home Depot… that’s HOME DEPOT! for our hearing impaired viewers… and make a giant cannister for their PRINGLES SURVIVOR TRIVIA POTATO CHIPS. Winners get to eat a KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUT and take a leak in a [SIZE=5]FREEZE DRIED FOLGER’S DECAF CRYSTALS[/5] jar.”
Meg Ryan, not Melanie Griffith.
I know I’ve mentioned this in a similar thread, but I may as well mention it again:
The Thomas Crown Affair. In one scene, Rene Russo is talking to Denis Leary in the police station and suddenly stops talking, opens a Pepsi One, and proceeds to lustily chug drink the entire can, all while holding the logo perfectly aligned facing the screen, while everyone in the Police station watches her in silence for 30 seconds or so until she’s finished. Then the movie resumes with no comment on what just happened.
Completely inexcusable, and I couldn’t get back into the spirit of the movie afterwards.
Oh, and it was also totally out of character, since they earlier make a big deal out of the fact that she only drinks this certain kind of green wheat grass drink, and later in the movie she comments on how Pierce Brosnan had that wheat grass drink ready for her at breakfast.
Why not go all the way with it? “Do you have Pepsi One, Mr. Crown? Because I only drink Pepsi One. The One stands for One calorie. One great calorie, One great taste. You only need One. Pepsi One.”
Back To The Future 2:
Pepsi
Nike
Sporting News
Apple
Pizza Hut
Texaco
Nintendo
etc.
Not that I’m proud of having seen it, but there’s a moment in Torque when the two chick antagonists are revving up their crotch rockets preparatory to a joust-style charge, and looming up behind each of them is a freakin’ gi-normous billboard for soda pop. Pepsi and Mountain Dew, if I remember correctly.
And if I do, that means the product placers did their job. :mad:
On the other hand, you have the subversive use of placement in Fight Club, where the products appear in the background of all the worst scenes, e.g. putting the gun to the convenience-store clerk’s head with a soda machine and attendant logos displayed prominently in the background.
See, the product placements were so blatant they overshadowed the actors in the movie. 
I remember the tank chase scene in Goldeneye where he crashes through a container-load of beer.
I do like the way they handle placement of cars, though: “Do try to not blow it up, 007”, “Aston Martin call it the Vanquish, we call it the Vanish”.
I have to repeat my mention of Independence Day, where in the SETI LAB, someone finishes a can of soda and throws it into the recycling bin – the contents of which are all Coca-cola. As if the momolithic contents aren’t blatant enough, are you saying that in a scientific lab, no one drinks the Dew?
C’mon, everybody knows the SETI lab has a contract with Coke! They don’t allow Pepsi products on site, security checks to make sure. 
The Sum of All Fears has a scene where there is a loooong closeup of a “candy” style vending machine that contains ALL CIGARETTES. And the vending machine is in the middle of the parking garage. :rolleyes:
I came in specifically to mention Manhunter. It’s even more blatant than described. It’s not just a bonding conversation, daddy is explaining that yes, he really was institutionalized for a while, like the kids at school say. The entire time they’re having the conversation, Petersen is pushing a shopping cart past shelves and shelves of prominently displayed Proctor & Gamble products, arranged in ways that make no sense for a supermarket layout. Most of the screen is filled up with product placement, while Will Grisham (heh) tells his son that to catch serial killers, he had to train himself to think like them, and lost the ability to stop thinking like them. “My mind was filled with unimaginably dark things, son. All the time. And that’s why I was in the hospital.” beat “What’s that coffee you like? Folger’s right?” “Yeah, Folger’s.” Kid grabs can of Folger’s and puts it in the cart, pointing the label directly at the camera as he takes exaggerated care to place it in just so.
All it was missing was the V.O. — “Folger’s fine coffee – preferred by more mentally-fragile criminalists than any other brand!” Cut to Hannibal Lector: “If you want the scent, smell a nice hot cup of Folger’s. Mmmmmmm.” Slurrrrp.
I used to like the anti-product placement they had on Japanese TV whenever they were showing movies “proudly brought to you” by a sponsor who made a rival product: if Toyota had bought the slot, they would carefully put those pixellated mosaics normally used to mask errant willies over the grille badges of any other cars.
Trouble was, it was so jarring it actually callled attention to the car Whose Name Cannot Be Shown: “Wait, I think I can make it out: G…M…C. Hmm, must be a Dodge Ram. Think I’ll go and buy one, just to piss 'em off.”
I remember a shot in (I think) Addams Family Values of Wednesday in which a huge billboard for Tombstone Pizza takes up about three-quarters of the frame. Extremely unsubtle.
But my candidate for most egregious product placement is Spielberg’s The Terminal, with Tom Hanks. I don’t think there’s a single shot in the entire film that doesn’t include a brand name of one of the stores in the airport: Starbucks, Sharper Image, Borders, etc., etc., etc. And of course every single employee of every one of those fine stores is a wonderful, kind, sympathetic, competent human being.
I would have enjoyed the film, if it hadn’t been for the constant intrusion of advertising.
Tomb Raider probably had the most noticeable product placement I’ve seen. It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but I do remember product placement for Vaio computers, and during a shooting scene there is a full-frame closeup of a Pepsi can getting shot. :rolleyes: There were more, but that’s all I can remember.
And speaking of Tomb Raider, the games aren’t immune to product placement either. Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (a game I actually enjoyed despite the product placement and the fact that everyone else seems to hate it) replaced Lara’s usual stopwatch with a specific type of Timex watch.
Timex also put product placement into the game Shenmue, by giving Ryo a Timex watch. That game also had ads for Sega products, like the Sonic and Virtua Fighter toys, plus you could play old Sega games from the 80s in the arcade. (I consider that fair game, though, since the game was made by Sega and it was more of an homage. Besides, I liked collecting all the little Sonic toys!) As I recall, there was also a Sega Saturn (or was it a Genesis?) in Ryu’s room. I believe the game Animal Crossing also has a “Super Nintendo” item.
And speaking of Sonic…there’s product placement in the Sonic Adventure games, too! In the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure, they had some downloadable web content (a feature that they really didn’t take enough advantage of, but that’s another rant entirely) and one of the downloads was basically an ad for AT&T, who were sponsoring the game by providing internet access to Dreamcast owners. (You didn’t have to use AT&T; I had the modem set up to dial my regular ISP that I already had, but it seemed like the vast majority of the people going online with their Dreamcasts didn’t realize that. Anyway…)
There are also a few ads in the first level of Sonic Adventure 2, including signs on the wall advertising Soap Shoes, which are apparently tennis shoes with plastic grooves in them that allow you to grind down rails (which Sonic can do in the game.)
There was also some snowboarding video game (Cool Boarders? I don’t remember) that had blatant Butterfinger billboards along the snowboarding tracks.
And then there’s Super Monkey Ball, which has the Dole logo printed on all of the banana powerups, as well as one level with a giant Dole logo at the stating point and a Dole blimp floating in the background.
I got the feeling that this was part of the point the movie was trying to make. The movie was about the general public (well, teenagers) being seduced by brand names and messages they didn’t even realize were there. By having the entire movie saturated with ads that not one character commented on (I remember a scene with a character showering in a Target-emblazoned bathroom), they were making a point. By the end of the movie, the saturation was so intense that the ads practically became subliminal on their own. Of course, by using real brands and not fake ones, they also made a buck or two…
Obviously, these advertisers didn’t get it. A major, but somewhat subtle in the sense that no one made a pontification about it, point of the film was the overuse of advertising.
{QUOTE=Ludovic]I have to repeat my mention of Independence Day
[/QUOTE]
What? Without mentioning the PowerBook? Talk about blatant.
How about Austin Powers? The second one had AOL and Starbucks. The third one had Taco Bell and Pepsi Twist. Do they even still make Pepsi Twist?
Little Nicky, and Popeye’s Chicken. The only chicken that can stop the eeeeeevil minions of hell!
You stole mine. Of all the advertisements that I’ve ever seen in a movie, this one stands out as singularly the most egregious. Utterly inexcusable and poorly handled.
In The Fifth Element, Bruce Willis crashes his taxi into a billboard of the Golden Arches. No product name, just the logo – but the logo is quite recognizable.