9 Shameless Movie Product Placements

For this list, we have chosen 9 movies that have such obvious, blatant product placements that they are very hard to miss. We have also included some interesting facts about the deals struck with some of the product placements.

#1 To start it off, Wayne's World with Pepsi, Doritos, Pizza Hut, Reebok, and more. This movie actually does this scene as a joke, (and it is hilarious), but they are still product placements nonetheless.









#2 Cast Away with FedEx. This entire movie is wrapped around a FedEx employee crashing in a FedEx plane, only to use FedEx boxes full of stuff to survive. He then saves one FedEx box the whole movie that keeps him going and motivated. FedEx paid nothing for this placement, but saw major increases in product awareness in Europe and Asia following the film.

#3 The Island with X-Box. Honestly, Michael Bay is a product placement guru. Transformers is basically one big ad for X-Box, Camaro, Burger King, Nokia, Mountain Dew, Furby, and more. The Island has just as many prevalent product placements throughout.





#4 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Papa Johns, Time Magazine, eHarmony, and Cinnabon. The whole movie is littered with scenes of an eHarmony employee calling Walter Mitty. eHarmony did not actually pay for this placement, but have actually created a dating coach feature to their website as portrayed in the movie. Only, instead of $500 a year (as the movie accurately advertises) it is $5,000 a year.

#5 Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol with Apple. Pretty much every Apple product got screen time in this movie, including the iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro. Apple claims they did not pay for the placement.









#6 Man of Steel with Sears, IHOP, 7/11, and Nokia. In one scene, Superman basically throws a bad guy from an IHOP into a 7/11, and then throws a train into a Sears. Producers for Man of Steel signed over 100 contracts with global marketing partners worth more than $160 million.

#7 Italian Job with Mini Coopers. These were an enormous part of the plot, and a big deal is made about them being able to fit inside hallways in a house. The year Italian Job came out, Mini Coopers yielded a 22% increase in sales.








#8 Toy Story with the Etch-A-Sketch and Mr. Potato Head. The producers of Toy Story actually struggled with a lot of different toy companies trying to strike deal to have their toys in the movie, but failed with some. Barbie refused to have her in the movie, so they replaced her with Bo Peep. G.I. Joe refused to have their action figures blown up buy Sid, so they replaced him with Combat Carl. Because of the crazy success of the first movie, Barbie came to the producers to get her put in number 2. The year the movie came out, Etch-A-Sketch sales went up 4,500% and Mr. Potato Head sales went up 800%. That is incredible!

#9 Goonies with Baby Ruth, Pepsi, Dominoes, and Nike. Steven Spielberg has a way of making the products who sign with him huge in his movies. Like Reese's Pieces on E.T. and Twizzlers on Super 8. The moral is, if you want to do a product placement, do it with Spielberg so he will fit it into the movie script, and not just the background.



Other include The Terminal with Burger King; You've Got Mail with AOL and Starbucks; James Bond with BMW, Astin Martin, Vaio, and Sony Ericsson; Where The Heart Is with Walmart; Green Lantern with Hot Wheels; Happy Gilmore with Subway; I Robot with Converse; Top Gun with Aviators; Little Nicky with Popeyes.


What other movies have shameless product placements? Let us know and like us at www.facebook.com/simplefilmcritics.