I’m not just your friendly neighborhood Internet film critic. I’m also an occasional freelance copyeditor for a major New York book publisher. And this week’s question is inspired by the manuscript I’m currently working on, a nonfiction memoir that is jam-packed with pop-culture references, including celeb names, movie and pop-song titles, brand names, and suchlike, every single one of which needs to be fact-checked for accuracy. (I’m good at this work and I’m glad to have it, but I really wish I didn’t need to do it. By which I mean to say: Please subscribe to my Patreon or my paid Substack, or make an obscenely generous PayPal donation, so I don’t have to do this anymore.)
So: What’s the best pop-culture product placement ever?
I’m going with FedEx in 2000’s Cast Away, which works on multiple levels. Today’s youngsters may not realize this, but back in the day, FedEx had a reputation for reliability that was second to none (it has gone to shit since). So within the story of the film, the idea that a FedEx plane could crash added an extra layer of horror… like, forget about Tom Hanks’s FedEx employee, what about all those FedEx packages on his crashed plane? It was a disaster that was damn near inconceivable. On a meta level, the usage of the FedEx brand — which the company did not pay for — has reportedly been very good for the company. Which isn’t surprising. The devotion of Hanks’s FedEx-employee character, fictional though it may be, is incredibly powerful, and — at least in the context of FedEx’s powerfully positive reputation of two decades ago — incredibly plausible.
Your turn…
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I don’t know about “best,” but perhaps the most memorable to me was when characters in the spy show Chuck started mentioning Subway sandwiches frequently, and often with lovingly detailed descriptions. It was hilarious. And apparently fans were totally on board with this, as Subway saved the show from cancellation.
Subway also had great and weird product placement on Community.
That’s right! As part of their Orwell/1984 episode, if I remember right.
Fiona’s Hyundai Genesis Coupe on Burn Notice. It was really genius product placement as, first, it was a car Fiona would plausibly drive. Second, Michael extolling it’s virtues in narration was actually something he regularly does in character on the show. The only real difference between his talking about the kind of car you want to get away from bad guys and talking about duct tape or electronic bugs is that a brand name was involved.
Third, I bought the car. Now I did lots of research to verify everything, but Michael and Fiona basically sold me a car I wasn’t aware of previously, and I’m still driving that 2013 Hyundai Genesis Coupe today, and it’s a great car.
I think you win this question! (Not that it’s a contest.)
Two product placements have given me more belly laughs than all the others combined:
The runner up spot is placement for a product that didn’t exist when the film was made, but now does. In Idiocracy, the fictional energy drink Brawndo’s marketing slogan, “It’s got electrolytes,” still pops into my head whenever I see anyone drinking Gatorade, Powerade, or any of those ridiculous Smart/Vitamin waters. If I may go full grandpa Simpson for a moment, when I was a boy, the idea of buying an individually sized plastic bottle of water with a sprinkle of salt and/or sugar was lunacy reserved for only the proudest, most wasteful elites or those attempting to mimic their big wallet energy. “Welcome to Costco, I love you,” from the same film is also fantastic placement.
And the number one spot is from one of my top ten movie sex scenes of all time – that’s right, it’s the out of nowhere, wildly inappropriate use of a canned beverage in Ninja III: The Domination employed by none other than Lucinda Dickey, star of the legendary Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. I’ve been a consumer of this drink since childhood, and I kid you not, for over three decades, no matter the occasion, location, or mood, whenever I encounter a similar can, I remember this scene and start laughing. This placement has sunk its roots so deeply into my psyche that even vaguely similar scenes in other terrible movies like Showgirls elicit incidental guffaws.
Watch if you dare, but be warned, this scene may not only ruin this particular drink for you forever, it may very well forever disrupt the sanctitude of the hallowed act of “seductively pouring beverages over body parts.” If you enjoy that scene, the opening golf course attack sequence is 100% refined cinematic gold as well.
The GOODYEAR BLIMP, in BLACK SUNDAY (no, not that Black Sunday).
Holiday Inn and a giant Pepsi machine in RED LINE 7000.
I always thought it was Reese’s Pieces in “E.T.”