Nowadays, if you bother making the effort watch music videos on Youtube or MTV.com or wherever, you’re often confronted with endless product placement for cell phones. Sometimes, as in the case of Fall Out Boy, the video itself is totally remade into a big cell phone ad, usually without the band even knowing that it’s happening.
But twenty years ago, when things were simpler and cell phones didn’t really exist, product placement was a lot subtler. I don’t know how many of you remember the Heinz campaign that ran around 1987, with the tagline “The best things come to those who wait.” Basically, they were putting a smily face on their famously poor packaging design. (And a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc starred in the campaign’s most memorable commercial.)
I mention all of this because I woke up today wanting to hear Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, and I remembered the video for their catchy #1 single from 1987, Lost In Emotion. Note the subtle product placement:
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I mean, note everything about that fabulous, fabulous video, but think especially about how much the world of nighttime amusements sucked before the invention of squeeze bottles.
So, readers. I know we all hate product placements and wish we lived in the Repo Man world where they didn’t exist, but are there any memorable instances of brands being shoved in your face that you don’t totally hate?