# The most shameless product placement seen in a movie. (and ruins the movie for you) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 23, 2003, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709 "2003-06-23T05:29:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![pilot141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e0b2c6/32.png) [@pilot141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pilot141)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/121 "2004-09-04T18:05:13Z")
[About This Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=2) = ATMB. Specifically [post #7](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=1997121&postcount=7) in the thread about Posting guidelines. Not **Loach** , but I hope this helps! ---
**Author:** ![modro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@modro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/modro)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/122 "2004-09-04T18:27:01Z")
As an unashamed car buff i tend to be driven insane by some of the more glaring examples of product placement in regards to cars. I, Robot and the takeover of the automobile industry by Audi (almost all cars were Audi) Also, in that movie, Will Smith’s “vintage 2004” Converse shoes which had attention drawn to them in glaring fashion at various points in the movie (which also applies to the Audi logo). The Matrix Reloaded, and population of the highways with all GM vehicles, with all of the main characters driving Caddy’s. Same goes for Lethal Weapon 4, and the GM takeover. I generally have no problem at all with name dropping or using real products in movies, in movies that take place in the present, it adds to that sense of realism, and is nowhere near as jarring as a fake product. Where I get irritated, is when the movie goes out of it’s way to feature one or two products extensively. It stands out, because we get hit by a barrage of so many different ads and product names, that when they heavily feature a small number of products, making the movie seem like it takes place in some alternate universe where Honda didn’t exist or something. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/123 "2004-09-04T18:29:23Z")
> [@Fish](#): > > I have to agree with **Abe.** I’m not sure why this board objects so stridently to a forty-foot tall advertisement for Coke on your movie screen when there’s probably one _right outside your window_ anyway, sitting in the quadrangle of your local high school or university, plastered in the pages of a history book, or filling space at the front of your VHS copy of _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade._ Although this is an old thread, I just have to say this: I would also complain about that too! Mind you, not at the level of getting the torches and pitchforks, but at the level of making a thread in the SDMB 🙂 and also to send complaint notes to the makers of the ads. ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/124 "2004-09-04T21:05:09Z")
James Bond uses Swatch. Must buy a Swatch… oh excuse me. What about movies where guys brag about the guns they use, like Dirty Harry? ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/125 "2004-09-05T01:04:52Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > That was in relation to the Atari/Blade Runner posts. Thank you, Tengu, I was just about to point out that Atari is still a very succesful company. Just cause they don’t make consoles, doesn’t mean they aren’t hard at work in the video game industry. It’s not to hard to imagine that sometime in the future they became a household name again with another console system. ---
**Author:** ![Catalyst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@Catalyst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catalyst)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/126 "2004-09-05T07:19:58Z")
> [@Menocchio](#): > > Also, Hamlet delivers “To be, or not to be”, the most famous and celebrated lines of dialogue in the English language, while strolling through what’s clearly a Blockbuster video. Shameful. I found the modifications to the soliloquy much more distracting than the setting. Actually, I found the scene kinda neat; rather fitting that he’s strolling through the action section, no? _The Crow_ playing in the background is probably no accident either, but I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know what exactly the reference would be. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/127 "2004-09-05T13:59:19Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > (Somebody should make a movie of the classic Pohl/Kornbluth novel _The Space Merchants_, in which ads are inescapable, even appearing on people’s bathroom mirrors.) Absolutely. Talk about a movie where the ads would pay for the entire budget. Then again… who’d want THEIR product to be the coffee with the “harmless additive” to “ensure consumer brand loyalty?” That could be tricky. And the challenge of creating a movie where there would be utterly ubiquitous advertising… WITHOUT being irritating as all hell (which in some ways is the point of the book) would be considerable, I think. I mean, who wants advertising blasted at them for two hours? There is a scene in the second book, though, that I’ve always thought was great… where these two down-and-out advertising victims are sharing an apartment. One’s hopelessly addicted to a specific beverage, working dead-end jobs to support his addiction, whereas the other one works dead end jobs to support his obsessive collection of “miniature collectibles” which he is quite certain will appreciate in value “someday…” THAT’s something that could be lampooned savagely without being irritating as all hell… ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/128 "2004-09-05T15:30:45Z")
I think one that I saw was for lucent, where they put the logo for the phone right on the mouth piece. It was just so obviously placed, and the shot so clearly rigged for the placement that it drove me crazy. Can’t remember what movie it was - which is something of a sad testament. I guess I’d just vote for anything where the logo is moved from its actual position on an item just for placement. It’s jarring. ---
**Author:** ![Spiratu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@Spiratu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiratu)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/129 "2004-09-05T19:08:55Z")
> [@Dooku](#): > > As for the OP, my example actually _did_ ruin this movie for me. _The Thomas Crown Affair_. In one scene, Rene Russo stops what she’s saying, opens a Pepsi One, and sits there drinking the entire can, all while holding the logo perfectly aligned facing the screen, while everyone in the Police station watches her. Totally inexplicable, totally unacceptable. Especially since they make a big deal out of the fact that she only drinks this certain kind of green wheat germ juice drink earlier (and in another scene later) in the movie. See, **Dooku** ’s example illustrates bad product placement, for this reason: When I watched this movie, and my mind was confronted with this scene, I drew a totally different conclusion. Obviously, the movie makers intended to suggest that Pepsi One tastes equivalent to nasty green wheat germ juice! Every time I’ve seen this movie, I’ve interpreted this scene this way, and thought it was some kind of joke against Pepsi One. Now, for the life of me, I can’t understand why this would be in here (and as some posters have pointed out, it might be illegal to do negative product placement) but seeing this certainly never improved Pepsi One’s standing in my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/130 "2004-09-05T21:21:57Z")
Another vote for _Mac and Me_ as the most nauseatingly bad “commercial disguised as a movie” ever made. One of the five worst movies I’ve ever payed money to see.\* \*-Mac and Me -Winds of Change -The Shape of Things to Come (title theft, no relation to 1930s classic) -Slithis -um… I’ve blocked it out. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/131 "2004-09-05T21:52:55Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Another vote for _Mac and Me_ as the most nauseatingly bad “commercial disguised as a movie” ever made. One of the five worst movies I’ve ever payed money to see. I agree… but in some ways, I can’t blame ‘em. After _E.T._ made all that noise and all that money, you can hardly blame some Hollywood suits if their greed got a little ahead of their brains. And considering what happened to the sales of Reese’s Pieces after E.T. ate so many, you can hardly blame McDonalds’ execs for suffering the same brain-softening syndrome. I remember walking into a McDonalds’ around that time and seeing a promo for _Mac & Me_, billed as the first McDonalds’ movie! My first thought was, “Uh-oh. So… they made some sort of science fiction movie. And McDonalds’ bankrolled it? And it’s a “McDonalds’ Movie?” This sounds like a fine thing to avoid.” And I did. And from everything I’ve heard, I’m still grateful to McDonalds’ for warning me well in advance. …although the only movies I’ve ever seen where it really seemed to ME like they were determined to jam product placement down my throat was _Back To The Future II_ (I haven’t seen that movie in years, but I remember the plugs for Pepsi, Mattel, Pizza Hut, and many others better than I remember the plot of the movie)… and, of course, the Pizza Hut gag from _Demolition Man_. I remember thinking that both movies actually had some pretty clever moments, but when they’re really going that far with product placement, it ceases to seem “clever” and instead becomes merely “mercenary.” ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/132 "2004-09-06T00:24:30Z")
I always hated how Quentin Tarantino shilled out in _Pulp Fiction_. All this talk about “Big Kahuna Burger”, a Big Kahuna Burger drink cup, burger, fries… I boycott Big Kahuna Burger in its entirety because of this. ---
**Author:** ![Uvula\_Donor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e19adc/32.png) [@Uvula\_Donor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uvula_Donor)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/133 "2004-09-06T03:20:15Z")
> [@Dr. Rieux](#): > > How about the Pan-Am logo in _2001_? How about it? It certainly doesn’t ruin the movie for _me_, it just makes me feel a little nostalgic. Because if you had asked me in 1969 what airline was most likely to run a commercial orbital shuttle service in 2001, I would have answered Pan Am in a heartbeat, and I bet most other people would have too. Also, I’m not at all certain that the use of Howard Johnson’s, AT&T, and Pan Am in _2001_ were actually product placements. It’s more likely that given their market leadership at the time the movie was made, Kubrick and Clarke extrapolated their future market dominance. ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/134 "2004-09-06T05:01:13Z")
Yeah, I actually just got done watching 2001 no more than 10 minutes ago and the “product placement” was hardly disturbing, if even noticable, with the exception of the AT&T Bell logo (which is more interesting than anything else). ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/135 "2004-09-06T05:03:38Z")
Just to clarify, by “interesting”, I meant that it’s no longer AT&T’s logo. Regardless, I didn’t find it distracting in the typical product placement sense whether it was intended as such or not. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/136 "2004-09-06T15:03:23Z")
> [@Master Wang-Ka](#): > > …although the only movies I’ve ever seen where it really seemed to ME like they were determined to jam product placement down my throat was _Back To The Future II_ (I haven’t seen that movie in years, but I remember the plugs for Pepsi, Mattel, Pizza Hut, and many others better than I remember the plot of the movie)… and, of course, the Pizza Hut gag from _Demolition Man_. > > I remember thinking that both movies actually had some pretty clever moments, but when they’re really going that far with product placement, it ceases to seem “clever” and instead becomes merely “mercenary.” I dunno, Back to the Future II was forgiveable to me, because they worked all those references in with context. (The 80s Bar, etc ) ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/137 "2004-09-06T15:11:47Z")
> [@TellMeI'mNotCrazy](#): > > I dunno, Back to the Future II was forgiveable to me, because they worked all those references in with context. (The 80s Bar, etc ) True… but the perfectly centered Pepsi bottle with _nearly nothing else in the frame_, the extremely colorful Mattel logo on the bottom of the hoverboard, the very distinct Pizza Hut logo on the dehydrated pizza… man, this was the _epitome_ of “distracting.” ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/138 "2004-09-06T15:42:35Z")
It was also a big departure from the first movie. In the director’s/writer’s commentary on Back to the Future, they talk about their one foray into product placement. The guy who organized it (whom they described as “pretty sleazy”) just told them to put a mention of California Raisins somewhere in the film. He didn’t tell them that he’d gotten the California Raisin commission to pay $50,000 by promising that their product would get a starring position. So where’s the promo? When Marty returns from 1955, the flash wakes up a wino sleeping in a pile of newspapers on a park bench. Although it’s half-obscured by wino, you can clearly read on the park bench: California Raisins. When the sponsors saw where their product was being used, they demanded (and got) their money back. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/139 "2004-09-06T15:49:31Z")
> [@Sublight](#): > > It was also a big departure from the first movie. In the director’s/writer’s commentary on Back to the Future, they talk about their one foray into product placement. The guy who organized it (whom they described as “pretty sleazy”) just told them to put a mention of California Raisins somewhere in the film. He didn’t tell them that he’d gotten the California Raisin commission to pay $50,000 by promising that their product would get a starring position. > > So where’s the promo? When Marty returns from 1955, the flash wakes up a wino sleeping in a pile of newspapers on a park bench. Although it’s half-obscured by wino, you can clearly read on the park bench: California Raisins. > > When the sponsors saw where their product was being used, they demanded (and got) their money back. Interesting. The scene in the diner, he mentions both Tab and Pepsi Free (if you want a Pepsi kid, you’re gonna pay for it!) There’s the JVC Camcorder that he taped Doc’s events with, and the Mr. Fusion was a nifty nod to Mr. Coffee, I thought. You think Zemeckis kicked himself when he realized how much money there was to be made in prodcut placement? 😉 Which leads me to wonder - if it’s a high-grossing film, does product placement really make much of a difference in profits? How much do these companies pay nowadays? ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709/140 "2004-09-06T15:51:35Z")
Just occured to me that 2 seconds worth of thought would have made me realize that neither Tab nor Pepsi Free were product placements if they were mentioned within five seconds of each other. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-shameless-product-placement-seen-in-a-movie-and-ruins-the-movie-for-you/183709.md?page=8)