20 Examples of Blatant Product Placements In Film and TV
Product placement stinks, and these bad integrations only make it worse.
Published 11 months ago in Facepalm
While we may do our best to skip through ads every time we turn on the TV, some of our favorite shows make it quite difficult to avoid the grasping clutch of our capitalist overlords. Love it or hate it — the vast majority of us in the latter — product placement is here to stay.
From entire episodes dedicated to the powers of Apple’s FaceTime feature to a superhero gleaning stretchy powers by eating a stick of Stride gum, here are 17 of the worst product placements in television history.
2
Modern Family
“Modern Family has 2 entire episodes that are dedicated Apple ads. One is all about how Phil's birthday is the same day as the iPad launch and its the only present he wants The other is shot entirely through Claire's MacBook and shows off all the multitasking and communication she can do with it” —Docphilsman
12
Under The Dome
“Let me add Under The Dome to the list. It's a spectacular car crash of a show in general in a "so bad it's good" way. Here's the scene. It's in French, but that really doesn't matter. The lady is seriously injured, and they drag her into the brand new Prius® to save her. Along the way they show off the wonderful maneuverability of their Prius® by avoiding a fallen tree. And then, while one guy clearly has trouble just getting the injured woman out of the car, the other guy spends the time plugging in the car to let it charge instead of helping with carrying the injured character. Oh, also, did I mention that the show plays in a trapped city that essentially has no power, but they still plug in their car to let it charge?” —__Hello_my_name_is__
15
The Rookie
“In ‘The Rookie’ Season 2 Episode 8, John Nolan is loading up his Toyota Tundra with building supplies. This part of the show feels like a commercial. The loading of the truck to see how much it can hold, closing the hatch with Tundra the focus in frame, the sweep along the side, entering the vehicle, the ignition switching on, the lighting on the dash and the tow haul.” —u/Will0w536
16
House of Cards
“In House of Cards, Season 3, Chapter 31, there is a moment where some guy is trying to show a pair of women who work in foreign affairs where and what the Jordan Valley looks like. Considering the Jordan Valley/Israel is a huge area of concern for a US Foreign affairs agent to look like a moron. The guy tries to show it on a tablet and they look so puzzled and he then ‘flicks’ the image from a Galaxy Tab to a Samsung TV. Focusing on the action and the devices.” —u/Will0w536
17
This Is Us
“In ‘This Is Us’, Season 5 Episode 8, There is a tiny little C-plot about a man named Nasir who pioneers and created data compression for images and video across computers. Cool story, not a whole about it other than how they met, what he does, and a blurb at the end. But this whole episode felt to me was entirely an ad for FaceTime. Everyone on the show has an Apple product already, from what I remember no one uses anything else. Using these [was] hugely popular in 2020/21 to connect to others.” —u/Will0w536
20
Smallville
“Smallville was crazy with it. WB shows always promote bands that are under the Warner Bros Records label, but in one episode they had a guy get superpowers because One Republic held a concert at the Stride Gum factory. And some kryptonite laced Stride Gum gave him stretchy powers” —Roook36
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