10 scenes ruined by ridiculous product placement

Telegraph

15-07-2025

When you go to the cinema or turn on your television, chances are that you are going to have something sold to you, ideally very subtly, while you watch it. There is a reason why technology and luxury goods companies pay millions to have their products displayed on screen, and that is because this kind of subliminal advertising is supposed to work. However, sometimes they overstep the mark, which is deemed to be what happened when Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks was deemed to have breached Ofcom's rules after an episode made both verbal and visual reference to the financial services app ClearScore.
Of course, the advertisement of goods on-screen in film and television has existed since the medium came into being, and, at its best, can transform the fortunes of a product. Sales of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses soared after Tom Cruise wore them in Top Gun (and its sequel), and after M&Ms refused to allow their sweets to be used on-screen in ET, Reese's Pieces were only too happy to oblige instead. They duly reaped the benefits of their confectionery becoming every child's go-to treat that summer. Put the right product in the right film or series in the right context, and the results can be stellar.
Get it wrong, however, and it can either be humiliating, bizarre or both. It was not for nothing that both Wayne's World and Arrested Development had some of their best jokes revolving around the egregious promotion of on-screen products, and audiences now are savvier than ever about being given the hard sell through cynically thought-out marketing schemes.
Here are 10 occasions when the product placement went that bit too far, and the picture or show suffered as a result.
Wings (1927)
The first film to win Best Picture at the Oscars was a silent aeronautical epic that introduced many cinematic precedents, including a pioneering use of product placement that now seems comically on-the-nose. Although it was not the first picture to contain an advertisement of a commercially available product (that would be 1920s short film The Garage, with Red Crown petrol), there is a scene in which a young Gary Cooper, playing the Tom Cruise-Maverick character of his day, firstly impresses two would-be pilots by telling them about his daredevil antics, and then produces a bar of Hershey's chocolate. The full-screen close-up, with the camera lingering on the chocolate just that bit too long, established a more unwelcome trend that continues to this day.
Mac and Me (1988)
McDonald's and its wares has been found in countless films, not least those aimed at children, and the fast food giant is all too aware of the power of the commercial tie-ins that it specialises in. However, the worst picture that it has ever been associated with is almost certainly the dismal E.T rip-off Mac and Me, which focuses on the friendship between a young boy and a 'Mysterious Alien Creature' (or MAC) but in fact seems to exist as an extended advertisement for the Golden Arches, to say nothing of Coca-Cola. How else to explain a bizarre, almost horrific extended scene at a McDonald's establishment, complete with a terrifying Ronald McDonald himself dancing madly?
Still, its producer RJ Louis – a former advertising executive who worked on McDonald's campaigns – could at least proudly boast that he was 'still the only person in the universe that ever had the exclusive motion picture rights to the McDonald's trademark, their actors, their characters and the whole company'. Yes, and Mac and Me – a film in which a child in a wheelchair flies off a cliff – is the miserable result.
You've Got Mail (1998)
Back in 1998, Starbucks was still a relatively hip coffee chain that had pioneered initiatives like jazz being played in their stores, exotic iced drinks with names like 'Frappuccino' and comfy sofas to lounge on. All well and good, but none of this excuses the sheer ubiquity of its name-checking and on-screen presence in the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks romantic comedy You've Got Mail. For a film about the struggle of the quirky independent (Ryan's bookstore owner) against The Man (Hanks's bookshop chain owner), there is an awful lot of emphasis on them all visiting Starbucks (yes, including Ryan, who is otherwise vociferously anti-corporations). In a line that has become duly (in)famous, Hanks's character has a mini-monologue about how the coffee chain specialises in being all things to all men, ending with a remarkable line reading of the words 'Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino!'
Cast Away (2000)
Hanks must have enjoyed his experience of acting alongside commercial products, because one of his next big roles came a couple of years later when he played FedEx systems analyst Chuck Noland, who is shipwrecked when a FedEx cargo plane crashes and must fend for himself on an uninhabited tropical island. While the film attracted much attention for the Wilson volleyball who becomes a mute companion of sorts to Noland, its central message – that Noland will ensure that the last surviving FedEx package will eventually make it to its destined recipient – means that the film (which has not endured especially well) ultimately plays out as the longest, most expensive FedEx advert ever made. It is almost a surprise, when the end credits begin, not to hear a voiceover deliver the parting line: 'FedEx: getting you your deliveries, whatever the circumstances.'
Casino Royale (2006)
Daniel Craig and Martin Campbell rebooted the Bond franchise for an edgier, post-Bourne audience, and the results are still terrific. Less tremendous, however, is the sheer amount of product placement on show, as if producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson had taken fright at the potential cost of making an 007 film and had chosen to offset their expense against as many on-screen commercial partners as possible. You'll find everything from Heineken to Virgin Atlantic here, but there are a couple of truly excruciating moments, whether it's Bond driving, of all things, a Ford Mondeo, or the scene in which, asked by Eva Green's Vesper Lynd if he's wearing a Rolex, he replies 'Omega', only for Vesper to purr 'Beautiful.' Apparently the various advertisers paid $100 million to have their wares displayed on screen. For a franchise often (and rightly) criticised for its over-reliance on commercial tie-ins, this was a scheme worthy of a Bond villain.
Jack and Jill (2011)
In his memoir Sonny Boy, Al Pacino candidly explained the peculiar circumstances by which he came to play himself in the disastrous Adam Sandler 'comedy'. 'Jack and Jill was the first film I made after I lost my money. To be honest, I did it because I didn't have anything else. Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. So I went out and did it, and it helped.' Sandler (who Pacino calls 'a great actor and a hell of a guy') may have saved the great actor's bacon, but it was a different kind of foodstuff that features in the film's most peculiar scene. Pacino, in full 'Hoo-ha!' mode, over-enthusiastically promotes Dunkin' Donuts new drink, the Dunkaccino, at Sandler's behest.
Announcing that his name is now 'Dunk', Pacino raps away, misquoting famous lines from his earlier films ('You want creamy goodness, I'm your friend/Say hello to my chocolate blend') and humiliating himself beyond measure. When Pacino, watching the commercial's playback, remarks to Sandler, in character, 'Burn this…this must never be seen by anyone', you can only wish that his request was followed.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
You would struggle to mount a defence of any of Michael Bay's Transformers films on artistic grounds – they are, after all, loud and imbecilic pictures aimed at pubescent boys that are intended to sell toy robots- but the sheer level of on-screen shilling that goes on during the miserable fourth instalment took excess to new depths. During its interminable 165 minute length, no fewer than 55 brands are featured on screen, most obviously Bud Light and Victoria's Secret, and Bay's background in advertisements is clear from the lingering close-ups that he gives every one of these products.
Nearly every one, that is. Hilariously, it came out in 2016 that the Chinese company Wulong Karst Tourism were suing the producers for $27million on the grounds that their logo was not displayed prominently enough in the finished film, a reminder that this monstrosity was made during that brief, bizarre period when Hollywood desperately sucked up to China. In this instance, clearly not effectively enough.
Sherlock (series 4, 2017)
This is less offensive or annoying than many of the other examples, and more simply jarring. By the fourth series of the much-admired Cumberbatch-Freeman Sherlock Holmes revamp, it was clear that the show was not operating in the same way that most BBC series did, and so the usual Beeb rules of not using recognisable technological products (ie Apple's iPhones) did not apply.
Therefore, we are shown Cumberbatch's Sherlock using a then-modish iPhone 6S, which, viewers are invited to infer, is the technological equivalent of the great detective's legendarily wide-ranging brain. It's not so much horrible, as just a bit forced. One half-expects the great detective to ask 'Siri, how do I solve this particular case?'
Ted Lasso (2020- )
It is obviously unfair to criticise Apple for asking that their products be included in series that they have funded at enormous cost to themselves, and many people are enormously fond of the big-hearted comedy-drama Ted Lasso, with Jason Sudeikis as the sunniest football coach you could ever hope to meet. It's just a shame, then, that the product placement here is ladled on with a trowel. Virtually every single scene features a character wielding an iPhone or a MacBook, checking out something on an iPad or watching an Apple-branded monitor.
And the software gets a big plug, too. When Ted's chatting to his son back home in the United States, what's his method of choice? FaceTime, naturally; Zoom doesn't get much of a look in here. Incidentally, Apple will only allow their products to be used for non-villainous characters, so Anthony Head's dastardly rival football club owner doesn't get a look in.
Barbie (2023)
Greta Gerwig's feminist toy fantasia was a huge box office hit and critically acclaimed, not least because it was thought to subvert its potentially tacky consumerist message with a deep strain of self-aware humour. (See, for instance, Rob Brydon being introduced in his micro-cameo not as the notorious 'Sugar Daddy Ken' but as 'Sugar's Daddy, Ken'.) However, it also functions as a two-hour advertisement for Mattel and the Barbie character. Despite its satirical nods at Mattel's patriarchal set-up, it's also a picture that is very keen to sell expensive merchandise to its audience, ranging from Tag Heuer watches to women's Birkenstocks.
And when Ryan Gosling's scene-stealing Ken turns up at the end in a hoodie emblazoned with the term 'I am Kenough', it is no great stretch to imagine the sweater's £58 price tag becoming part of an incredibly expensive post-film shopping trip.