These Aren't The Ads You're Looking For
One movie scene can turn a “whatever” product into a permanent part of culture, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. We start with our usual real life swirl, the SpaceX “space squid,” an update on endurance legend Carl Bushby, and a surprisingly honest detour into life insurance, death plans, and the oddly comforting idea of donating your body to science.
Then we go deep on product placement in movies, the kind Gen X grew up breathing in through VHS rewatches. We break down the marketing alchemy behind Reese’s Pieces in E.T., how Ray Ban Wayfarer sales were revived by Risky Business, and why Top Gun made aviator sunglasses feel like an identity instead of an accessory. From Vans checkerboard slip ons in Fast Times at Ridgemont High to a Baby Ruth moment in The Goonies, we track how brands become emotional shortcuts when they actually belong in the story.
We also hit Twinkies in Ghostbusters and Zombieland, White Castle turning into a true destination thanks to Harold and Kumar, Toy Story using real toys as real characters, and the strangest win of all: PBR getting a counterculture boost from Blue Velvet. If you love 80s movies, 90s movies, consumer culture analysis, and the way nostalgia messes with your shopping cart, you’ll have a lot to argue with us about.
Subscribe, share the episode with a fellow movie nerd, and leave a review so more listeners can find us.
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1 SPEAKER_00: Two best friends fucking fast.
We're missing two arcades, we're having a blast.
Eating these dreams, thinking on screens, it was all bad.
SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Like Whatever, a podcast for, by, and
about Gen X.
I'm Nicole, and this is my BFFF, Heather.
Hello.
So Heather had a week, and we're just not even going to talk
about it.
We can't talk about it.
She already talked about it and it stresses me out.
So not even a week, just two days.
Two days.
Two very stressful days.
Days.
But she got it out and she's good now.
SPEAKER_02: Well, until November.
SPEAKER_05: So I want to talk about the space squid.
Did you see the space squid from SpaceX?
I didn't.
Oh, the yeah, yeah.
Uh-huh.
That's what they call it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
It was really pretty.
I did not, I was so mad at myself.
It was yesterday.
And I know where I was.
I was caught I was planning on being crossing the bridge at
that time so I could see it.
But I don't know what happened that I forgot or what I don't.
I have a lot of other things on my mind currently.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I have a friend in Florida and he posted
a picture on Facebook.
He saw the space squid.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: It was very exciting.
SPEAKER_02: That launched out of uh Canaveral, Cape Canaveral.
SPEAKER_05: Well, the space the squid though is the thing that
the effect that happens.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
Okay.
The the rocket boosters leaving.
SPEAKER_05: And they look like a big bubble.
Yeah.
I think it it had something.
I can't remember what it had to do with, but yeah, it was really
cool.
I hadn't seen that before.
SPEAKER_02: No, the ones they launch out of here do not that I
think it's because it's the the reusable rocket boosters, so
they they power back up to come back down to land.
I think that's what it is.
And the ones they launch out of here, they do not.
Okay.
They don't come back.
Gotcha.
Makes sense.
SPEAKER_01: That's my understanding.
I could be wrong, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Nothing, nothing real exciting going on over
here.
SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to update us on um Carl Bushby.
Yes.
Because I forgot to do it last week.
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
And I forgot to put it on Facebook.
SPEAKER_02: But Carl has swum across the English Channel and
landed at Shakespeare Beach, Dover, on October 5th through
the 7th.
And after landing, he confirmed he still had 400 kilomet
whatever a kilometer, however many kilometers is in a
whatever, left to walk to reach his mother's home in Hull, where
the journey will officially end.
His current location is England, somewhere between Dover and
Hull, actively walking the final 400 kilometers north.
He is on the road completing the last leg of the expedition.
So uh I think he's still on target for the November 1st.
SPEAKER_05: I would love to know what emotions he's going through
in this.
Like, like you've been doing this for so long.
I I can't even imagine.
And now it's almost over.
Like now what?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Now what are you gonna do?
Right.
You're never gonna top that.
No.
No.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_05: Like, you know, you'd be excited and scared and
confused.
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I mean, because he's only in like his
40s.
Right.
SPEAKER_05: So yeah, exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, he still has half his life to live.
Yep.
SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna get a job?
Like, what job are you qualified for at this point?
SPEAKER_05: Go walking backwards.
Yeah.
I mean turn around and take back off.
And now I'm going back.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_05: Well, I'd imagine he'll make money touring and um
lecturing and he'll probably write a book or two.
Well, he's already written some.
That's how he's gonna make money.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but uh I'm not worried about him making money,
but like when you have been I mean, I know there was times
where he wasn't actively for intents and purposes.
Yeah, you've been mobile.
Yeah.
So were you gonna go just sit on the couch for 30 years now or
yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Just get up and walk around town all day.
Yeah.
Just to get it out.
SPEAKER_02: You're just gonna go for a run and force gump it, or
like what?
What happens now?
Yeah.
Now what?
We will have to continue to follow.
I just wanted to update us all on um Yes.
Yes, on that.
Uh so keep your eyes peeled.
It should be, I think they're still on target for the
November, November 1st.
So if you are still caring about him, we're in the home stretch.
SPEAKER_05: So and sending thoughts and prayers out to Pope
Leo.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_05: It sounds like it's the diagnosis is very, very
good.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's good.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I knew somebody who had that.
They went into for a biopsy and they had to have half their lung
removed.
And he's fine, he's been alive for like almost like 20 years
ago.
SPEAKER_05: I was listening to NPR on the way down and they
were talking about it, talking to doctors, and they said, you
know, this the success rate and this having an effect is I mean,
plus he's got God on his side.
Exactly.
So I mean Yeah.
He went to mass today.
He just had his surgery yesterday.
SPEAKER_02: I mean maybe prayer does work.
I mean, I don't think he would have should have gotten cancer
to begin with if prayer worked, but yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I asked that question all the time as a kid.
I remember asking my mom, like because you know, we're we went
to a church with a lot of blue hairs, like a lot.
So people were dropping like flies all over the place.
And we'd always have to pray, like we'd pray one Sunday for
them.
We come back the next Sunday and find out they were dead.
And I asked mom, I'm like, Why are we praying for these people
if they just died anyway?
Like it doesn't work.
Death's always gonna win.
Yep.
100%.
SPEAKER_02: It's never lost.
Nope, nope, nope.
We had uh people come in yesterday, because yesterday
wasn't a bad enough day at work, to sell us life insurance and um
disability insurance.
And you get, I think you get with the post office one year
salary of life insurance, and this was like on top of that,
and I don't know why you would but whatever.
And so the lady is trying to sell it to me, and I'm like, I I
just first of all, I can't afford it.
Like, sorry, but it's not happening.
And she was like, Well, well, you know, with the life
insurance and this, and I'm like, I don't really care what
happens after I I was gonna say you don't care.
I don't have any errors.
SPEAKER_05: You'll be dead in the house.
SPEAKER_02: I'll be dead cares.
I've already made arrangements to donate my body to the body
farm.
Nobody's gotta pay for a funeral, nobody's gotta bury me,
nobody's gotta cremate me.
This is all taken care of.
I don't have anybody to to take care of when I'm dead, so yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I just got my life insurance policy update thing in
the mail the other day.
It's a pretty nice sum.
I'm gonna tell my kids because I was watching a true crime show
the other day, and this stupid woman tells her trashy ass
granddaughter and his her trashy ass granddaughter's boyfriend
that when she dies, they're gonna get X amount of dollars.
Well, guess what happened within a week?
They killed her.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you you should tell them about it.
SPEAKER_05: Um No, I know because they have to have the I
actually need to start making a file.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Did you put them did you they're beneficiaries now,
yes.
SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
Yeah.
Um Yeah.
I I don't I don't need I don't need to be paying it's like
fifty dollars a paycheck.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm so old.
SPEAKER_05: Well state, I mean it's good life insurance.
I only pay a couple bucks a paycheck.
And I'm sure it is.
It's nice, so I'm certainly not gonna have any savings or
anything to leave them, so I'll at least have that.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody cares about me, so I'm just gonna go on.
Whatever.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
I know that um my father-in-law um before he passed already had
his all the death arrangements made, paid for, casket,
everything.
And my parents have done the same thing for me.
Like, I don't know if my kids are gonna get that same
treatment.
I still have to decide what I want to do with my carcass.
Yeah, you need to turn you need to probably voice that also.
Well, I just don't know yet.
There's so many different things.
SPEAKER_02: You'll be dead though.
Yeah.
So it really won't matter.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I know.
But I'm talking like donate my body to science, which I don't
want to do because my mom's doing that, so no, thanks.
SPEAKER_02: Well, if you also when you donate your body to
science, they give the body back.
So they still have to do something with the body.
So the skin suit has to be.
And they they strip it of all its its internal or they do
whatever they're gonna do.
SPEAKER_05: I want to do something organic.
Like throw me in the kitchen, bar b bury me in the woods.
I don't care.
SPEAKER_02: The body farm.
Go to the body farm.
All right.
They just throw you in a ditch or in a car or underwater, or
it's like it's all so they can study what happens to the body
when it as it decomposes in different elements.
And then what do they do with?
They leave them there forever.
They don't give them back.
You can request them back if you want, but they leave them there
because they they want to know in 50 years what hap what what
do bones look like when they've been in that condition for 50
years.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'd be down with that.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
Look it up, donate to the body farm.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: But they just I mean, you could be in a
horrendous situation.
Your body could be like in a car underwater or in a shallow grave
or in a deep grave or like with leaves, or it's all any any kind
of scenario.
I think they burn some.
SPEAKER_05: That sounds fun.
unknown: Right.
SPEAKER_05: For my body to do after I'm gone.
That's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_02: I then I will be able to help the crime.
Yes.
As much as I love absorb crime, I think too.
I'm giving back.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm gonna give back.
Yeah.
It's pretty cool.
They just they come and get you.
You just call.
Like whoever is in charge of my carcass is gonna have to call
and then they come get it.
SPEAKER_05: And then I was watching that um uh unknown
serial killer show that I told you about.
It's crazy.
Like, why are these people not famous too?
What makes the other ones famous?
This dude, he's actually he shot Larry Flint.
And he's the one that paralyzed him and put him in the
wheelchair.
And I didn't even know any of that.
Yeah.
But he was uh he was a raper and a murderer.
Typical.
Yeah.
Um typical.
Oh, I remember he was trying to rid the world of ugly people.
Unfortunately, it was very racist.
What he considered to be ugly.
Get out of here.
But then he shot Larry Flint because Larry Flint put a
biracial couple in Hustler magazine.
But that's the one thing that he regretted.
But it's because he didn't do the job right.
He lived.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they don't like that.
They're not big fans of people living.
No.
No.
They feel something feels unfinished here.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But now he's in jail, so not too bad.
I guess this death didn't win that time.
It will, though.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
The household.
I don't know if Larry Flint's still alive or not.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know either.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of which, Mike Dick died.
SPEAKER_05: Yep.
And we text each other and we're like, oh.
I thought he was already dead.
I did too.
Maybe we were thinking of uh Madden.
Maybe.
But I know Madden's dead.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I I uh when I heard it, I was like, hold on, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02: He was still alive?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I wonder if he had some sort of um illness or
something, because you haven't seen him in years.
All the sport stuff that goes on, he's never appeared anywhere
ever.
So I wonder if he had something going on Parkinson's or
something like that.
Probably something.
SPEAKER_02: Probably has CTE.
Oh, yeah.
True.
That is true.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Because back then they didn't they didn't even
wear helmets.
They didn't.
They just wore leather on it.
It's a technicality.
Shoe on the head.
He played for real.
SPEAKER_05: And they were allowed to hit each other way
harder than they are now.
SPEAKER_02: They were trying to knock each other out.
Exactly.
Every time.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You'd get like 15 concussions one game.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So I'm sure.
Well, it used to pay good money.
I don't know if they still do that, but I remember they used
to get rewarded.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Like thousands of dollars if they're going to be
able to do that.
SPEAKER_02: I think that was just a I think that was just
Buddy Ryan's Eagles.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: The bounty bowl.
SPEAKER_05: I don't think that's true.
I think I remember hearing players now that are my age and
older talking about back when they played, and there would be
bounties put on more so for defensive players to get.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was Buddy Ryan.
Chicago and Philadelphia.
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Those were good times.
SPEAKER_02: The Buddy Ryan years were my favorite.
Yeah.
Now the Eagles suck.
Suck.
Suck, fuck, fuck.
SPEAKER_05: I feel it's always like this every year though,
because I'm always calling for Sirianni to lose his job this
time of year.
Yeah.
Although I'll stand by that at the end of the year.
Even if he gets us to the playoffs.
I don't like his play calling.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think we've been spoiled now for the last 30
years with Andy Reid and Doug and Sirian.
I mean, we've been making the playoffs consistently every
year.
SPEAKER_05: Well, I have a theory.
I was thinking about this on Sunday.
We don't have like any great teams because we don't have any
old coaches.
Like everybody's young.
Andy's the only one that's old, I feel like.
And he has a team that is consistently in the playoffs.
I mean they weren't last year, but it happens.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but under the under I mean, I mean it's been a
long time since the Eagles did not have a winning season.
Yeah.
Like a long time.
My work, Bestie and I were talking about it, and never in
his lifetime, and he's 30.
So I mean.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, there are good teams, but they can change
from year to year.
It's not like every year you know these same teams are gonna
be on there.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but what I'm saying is like they have
consistently had winning years over the last 25.
Like I remember I was an Eagles fan when they were oh and you
know, 15, or when they won one game and it was Dallas.
I sat through games.
I sat through seasons in the stadium that were oh, and like
we didn't, and I sat in the rain and snow and all that nonsense.
So I think we've been spoiled the last 30 years for making the
playoffs all the time.
I mean, Andy Reid had us in the playoffs every year, and yeah,
so well, I still want more.
Well, I wouldn't bank on it this year.
SPEAKER_05: I'm not.
SPEAKER_02: Although the the team shouldn't be healthier this
week, so that is true, but I hate using that excuse.
SPEAKER_05: Me too.
Like you're all professional NFL players.
SPEAKER_02: Your backup should be just as good.
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
I think we've probably gone on about football far too long.
SPEAKER_05: Well, it's the first time this season we've talked
about it.
That's true.
Because each week I go home and I'm like, we didn't mention
anything about the Eagles.
Not that there's been anything to talk about.
SPEAKER_02: And I imagine they'll be announcing the
halftime show very soon.
I think I said this about this time last year.
I hope it's bad bunny again.
SPEAKER_04: It's not gonna be bad bunny again.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I said they was gonna they were gonna go
country last year and they didn't.
So God, don't do that.
I think please don't.
I think they might go co I don't know.
I don't know, because they seem to be liking to go against the
grain these days.
So no country, please.
SPEAKER_05: It's bad enough half an under list Carrie Underwood.
SPEAKER_02: How much they had so much nonsense up to the Super
Bowl and during with everybody saying, I'm not watching, but
they got an awful lot of play with people not gonna watch it,
or they're gonna watch it and then turn it off at halftime
just to prove their point.
And so I don't know, maybe they'll go with um I don't know.
Is there a Muslim group that they could bring in?
SPEAKER_05: I was dancing to Bad Bunny and Punta Kana for the
Super Bowl last year.
Yeah.
Ugh.
I wonder when it is this year, because I'm going to Jamaica in
February this year.
It's Valentine's weekend, I think.
I think I heard, isn't it Valentine's Day?
It might be, which is just not gonna work.
Do you know how many poor men who have wives?
And yes, I am gender whatever in right now.
Yes, the 14th is a Sunday.
Um but women want to celebrate Valentine's Day, and a lot of
times that's the only time their man takes them out, and they're
not gonna they don't care about the Super Bowls on.
Such a stupid holiday.
I bet there's gonna be a lot of brunches.
Yes.
Well, the game doesn't start till six.
You could have dinner at like 4 30.
Yeah, but you're getting ready for the game.
It's not like you just plop on the couch at six o'clock.
SPEAKER_02: Well, right, but I feel like I don't know.
SPEAKER_05: And going out on Valentine's Day, you're not
getting back home that fast.
SPEAKER_02: You do if you go at noon.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: That is true.
To McDonald's.
That's a perfectly acceptable Valentine's Day for me.
SPEAKER_05: If restaurants are smart though, they will all have
some kind of brunch.
You can get up in the morning, go get all that out of the way,
and focus on what's important.
Football.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Get that relationship crap out of the
way.
Stupid anyway.
All right, do your little spiel.
Oh, um, like share, rate review.
Please.
You can find us on all the socials at like whatever pod.
Uh we have a website, like whateverpod.com.
Yes.
Uh we have an email address.
We did whateverpod at gmail.com.
Right.
Am I missing anything?
SPEAKER_02: Don't forget my travel agency.
Oh.
Which I have not been working on because of the events of I've
been busy.
SPEAKER_05: Make sure that you go.
If um I'll post again on socials, but I did post it uh
after last week, the website.
If you are into spooky adventures, yes.
SPEAKER_02: I have there are so many cool ones that I was
looking at.
I'll bet they have a um, if you're into the true crime,
there are two true crime um cruises.
Yeah.
Um I won't I want one of them bad.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So yeah, but I imagine basically anywhere you
go, you can find some kind of creepy stuff.
I mean, there are creepy people and creep creepy things
everywhere.
SPEAKER_02: That's the best part.
I have found some really cool stuff in Vegas.
I found some really cool stuff in like California.
Uh, there's some there's some pretty cool spot just Salem.
SPEAKER_05: So yeah, even if you already have a vacation planned
and booked, I mean, even better.
A weekend.
Reach out to her, let her know where you're gonna be.
SPEAKER_02: We can do Crampish night somewhere.
I know.
Don't think I haven't thought of that.
Because it's uh it's too late for Salem now.
You have to book Salem like a year in advance at least.
But I've already done Salem.
I have not.
SPEAKER_05: Well, my first marriage was October 15th.
Your dad's cutting grass this week.
SPEAKER_02: This guy, yeah, his grass cutting.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he has to do that right now.
Perfect timing.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Tomorrow's actually October 15th.
That was my first anniversary date.
Yeah.
And we did honeymoon in Salem.
Oh, that's right.
SPEAKER_02: I did know that.
SPEAKER_05: And it was super cool.
It really was super cool.
It was like just being in one big haunted house.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: It's a whole town.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I do want to go to Savannah.
Savannah's haunted, and there's lots of stuff in Savannah to do.
SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, a friend of mine actually went to a wedding
this summer in Savannah.
Um, and she said she'd love to go back.
SPEAKER_02: It was I hear it's really nice.
SPEAKER_05: It's really cool.
SPEAKER_02: cool shops yeah lots of cool late I need to I maybe
we put that on our list of things to do.
Yep.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah because it's that wouldn't be a bad 10 hours
from here?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah absolutely we need a car that works.
Yeah that's that's the trick of it.
Yeah and and money.
SPEAKER_05: Oh that too but as a travel agent you get the good
deals I could fake my death in cash in that life insurance
policy and then we can go like here's what we're gonna do.
Make me the beneficiary except then you'd be the one to go to
jail for my murder because I went I died or went missing
right after I signed over another big mistake people make.
Changing life insurance policies creating life insurance policies
weeks before deaths.
That would be why I have been investigated for murder yeah
another big one I've noticed lately if they're asked if they
ask you about your relationship don't say oh it's great we love
each other we never fight nobody does that's not true and they
know you're no yeah no I fucking hate him half the time that's
what exactly yeah that's more believable they'd be like yeah
well yeah I hope somebody did kill that fucker.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah son of a bitch I didn't do it unfortunately
somebody beat me to it stole my thunder chance I'll never get
again but the and the if the police don't investigate you the
um insurance company sure as shit will because I was the
beneficiary of a life insurance policy that was only four months
old.
Yep and they made sure that they luckily I was not in this state
where was I and it was all for not anyway I just like to get
older oh my god I'm frustrating as fuck yeah anyway anyway let's
stop okay going on and on let us we're gonna fuck around and find
out about product placement in movies oh I know okay so picture
this Sicily no leftover from last week it's 1982 you're
sitting in a darkened movie theater at popcorn in your lap
and an alien a wrinkled luminous impossibly impossible impossibly
loved lovable god damn it impossibly lovable
extraterrestrial is being lured across a suburban backyard by a
trail of small candy coated chocolate pieces the camera
lingers on them your eyes follow and in that single quiet
cinematic moment Reese's pieces went from a struggling candy
brand most Americans had barely heard of to one of the most
recognized confections on the planet.
SPEAKER_05: It is one of the greatest candies of all time I
do not care for it.
SPEAKER_02: You don't like peanut butter though do you I do
like peanut butter and I like Reese's peanut butter cups.
SPEAKER_05: Oh I love Reese's I like to take Reese's pieces and
I like to take ten and put five in one cheek and five in the
other cheek and hold them there until they melt and then I chew
them all together.
SPEAKER_02: So is it basically peanut butter and chocolate?
SPEAKER_05: I don't actually it's just peanut butter.
Oh okay that's why yeah okay so heads up to everyone the MMs
which is my favorite of the it's exactly like that like it's the
smooth consistency of that chocolate too it's not the
crumbly peanut butter like an Aresis cup.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
So the MMs ones look I'm an MM aficionado MMs have been a part
of my life since I was uh in the uterus because my father is a
big MM eater there is always it's in your DNA there's always
a jar of MMs in this house somewhere and I've known you for
over 30 years and I can always say that is true.
Always there is if there's nothing else there is a jar of
MMs somewhere in this house.
He pulls his MMs out of pockets all the time um and I have his
van currently and there were tootsie rolls that have now
melted because I don't eat them fast enough all over that thing.
Every time I open a compartment tootsi rolls fall out big
tootsie roll fancy so um the M peanut butter MMs not peanut MMs
for peanut butter they're in the red I highly recommend that you
let them heat up a little bit like in the dash that's what
happens with the pieces if you put them on your dash and you
let them get melty they pop when you eat them it's fucking
amazing.
SPEAKER_05: Well that's what happens when you put them in
your cheeks you don't actually chew them I just kind of put
them between the tongue and the roof of my mouth and smash them
and yeah they all just pop okay then you're gonna need to put
some in your car at work and let them melt.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
And see what and then have them and then you're gonna be like
this is this is magic.
Yeah.
Anyway back to Reese's we're not this is not about MMs uh that's
the magic trick we're gonna talk about today not smoke and
mirrors but sneakers and sunglasses candy and twinkies
shades perched on Tom Cruise's face and a baby Ruth bar lobbed
into a sewer drain.
We're talking about product placement the art the science
and sometimes the sheer dumb luck of getting your brand into
right into the right frame at exactly the right cultural
moment for those of us that grew up in the 80s and 90s this
wasn't advertising it was your childhood it was Saturday
afternoons it was VHS rewatches it was the weird intimacy of
watching a movie and feeling like the things you love were
being reflected back at you on a 40 foot screen products weren't
interrupting the story they were the story I know this client
like he's literally under the window that we were recording by
he said he let me hit the pause on this he said um let's trace
the arc of some of the most legendary brand moments in movie
history what did those scenes do to those brands and what does it
say about us about consumer culture about the strange
alchemy of Hollywood that a piece of candy or a pair of
sunglasses could become a cultural touchstone so Reese's
pieces and in case you didn't know what I was talking about
because you were in a box apparently for the last 40 years
Reese's pieces and ET mm okay can we just say ET is a fucking
sad movie this period I can't watch it it makes me too sad.
I can't I know he lives spoiler alert I know he lives but that
whole him going gray like that that's just it kills me.
I can't do it and it's not even real and I can't do it I can
literally watch real people real crime scene photos because those
are my favorite episodes of like the first 48 every time I'm like
oh that's real crime scene I can watch that happen all day long.
SPEAKER_01: Don't feel bad at all but you put a a puppet a
puppet that's it can't do it.
SPEAKER_02: It's the Muppets it's not even an animal like an
animal okay because there is a website does the dogdie dot com
and that will tell you in every movie if any of the animals die
just a heads up for those of you who can't tolerate it.
Yep I'll get to a movie and as soon as I feel like the animal
is about to go I'm like that's it we're done I'm out no I don't
care I don't care and so ET.
SPEAKER_05: That is the only thing that bothers me when I'm
watching true crime like I was watching one the other day and
the dude had killed his mom and the mom's friend was like well
we do rescues for cats and she has a cat in there I need to get
in there to get it and the cops went there and the cat wasn't
there so they asked the son and he was like I got rid of it I
was like no not the cat the one that get me is the birds I'll
bet because they're so smart.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah they know what's going on well I know one
was part of a at least one that was part of a crime scene they
brought it into to um into court of an African gray because
they're they are chatty.
Yeah and it word for word repeated the murder wow yeah
that's amazing it is but they're so you know these people have
these birds for 30 years makes me sad.
Anyway back to a fake thing not real when Steven Spielberg was
making ET the extraterrestrial he initially approached Mars the
company behind MM's about using their candy in the film and Mars
said no fucking stuff on them the Reese's have been debated
ever since some say they thought the movie looked too weird.
Some say they didn't want their product associated with an alien
whatever the reason Mars walked away from one of the greatest
marketing opportunities in the history of American commerce not
that MMs need any help.
That's true.
Enter Hershey their relatively new product Reese's pieces a
peanut butter candy that had launched in 1978 and was
struggling to find its footing got the call.
Hershey agreed to a promotional tie-in around for around one
million in advertising support in return Spielberg used a candy
in what would become one of cinema's most iconic sequences
young Elliot scatters a trail of Reese's pieces to coax the
frightened alien out of the garden shed and into his life
case you didn't know there's gonna be a lot of spoiler alerts
guys I don't want to ruin everyone's lives the film opened
on June 11 1982 I mean if you haven't for real yeah that's on
you that is your problem and not mine.
Within two weeks sales of Reese's pieces had increased by
65%.
Within months the candy had become a phenomenon Hershey's
investment returned itself many times over.
To this day Reese's pieces is one of the most recognized
candies in America and the brand itself has become synonymous
with a kind of warm nostalgic cinemat cinematic sweetness that
no traditional ad campaign could have manufactured.
The lesson the industry took from ET was seismic.
Suddenly studios and brands alike woke up to an entirely new
category of marketing one that wasn't interpret interruption
but integration one that didn't shout at you from a billboard
but whispered to you from the screen you already trusted and
here's the thing like go back and watch in the older movies
like the eight especially 80s movies it is very prominent in
80s movies.
Coca-Cola like Pepsi and then watching movies now where
nothing is branded right it's crazy yeah to go back and watch
and you're like oh look at that and because you get to see the
old logos of everything and right that's fun too but like
you never notice the difference until you actually do notice
that there is a huge difference between 80s movies and their
product placement and now there is zero product placement.
SPEAKER_05: I wonder like speaking of 80s movies this is
something I meant to talk about at the top of the show.
This weekend I did a fun thing and I watched nine to five oh
yeah have you watched it lately I did I watched it when Dolly
died it is such a good movie it was really good like it's funny
because I haven't seen it in years but back then we watched
movies 50 million times because we had VCRs so I would actually
in scenes I'd know what line was coming next or I'd know what was
gonna happen next but I didn't know what how the movie was
going to go.
Like it was weird like my brain was like this seems familiar
yeah um but I was laughing my ass off that movie was fantastic
like it was and Dolly was just a little baby oh my gosh she was
so damn cute.
SPEAKER_02: It's a good movie yeah yeah it's funny and for its
time yeah for the women to yeah yeah it was awesome if if you
haven't watched it lately out there crowd I highly recommend
it yeah I watched it when Dolly died it was they of course they
had it all over yeah hilarious um two years before Maverick got
his aviators Tom Cruise was wearing a different pair of
Ray-bans in 1983 Risky Business gave us one of the most iconic
images in movie history a young Tom Cruise home alone sliding
across a hardwood floor in white socks a pink Oxford shirt and a
pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and tidy whiteies
yeah do you know I have never seen Risky Business I won't do
it I absolutely fucking hate Tom Cruise I do too but his new
movie looks good don't care he could have the greatest movie on
earth and I would not I've never seen it doesn't look like have
you seen the commercials like he has a lot of makeup like they it
doesn't look like him he looks like old man nope I know I'm
really torn because it looks really good but yeah I can't
stand it.
SPEAKER_05: I hate him although I did love him in Tropic
Thunder.
SPEAKER_02: Nope haven't seen it I literally have maybe seen two
maybe three Tom Tom Cruise movies well he's only a small
part of it but he is actually funny enough I can't even right
now think of any Tom Cruise movies that I have actually
watching I'd cocktail because that was restaurant nope I don't
think I've seen that one either eyes wide shut I got five
minutes into that and I had to turn it off because I was like
this is fuck I can't pay attention.
This is a pay attention I did like the first mission
impossible nope never seen it I haven't watched any since I saw
the war of the worlds okay and cocktail I think I do believe
are probably the only two Tom Cruise movies that I have ever
seen.
That's awesome I just hate him I hate him so much like you know
how there's just like somebody my dad's it's Ben Vereen which
is a weird thing to he's a weird person to hate but um Ben Veren
used to be on a kid's show Zeboomafu.
Zeboom of right that sounds right yeah yeah and every time
he would come on my dad would just be like oh I fucking hate
Ben Vereen and it's like okay now that's weird but I get it
because anytime Tom Cruise flash I'm like I don't I don't care I
don't want to know about it.
I don't it could be I'm telling you it could be the greatest
movie I'm sure Top Gun is great.
We won't ever see it.
I will not see it.
And I've never seen Risky Business um the one thing about
the Wayfarer that makes the story remarkable by 1982 the
style was essentially dead.
Ray-Ban had introduced the Wayfarer in 1952 and it had been
a cultural staple through the 50s and 60s worn by James Dean,
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast Tiffany's the Blues brothers and
the blues brothers but by the late 70s and early 80s the
fashion world had moved on.
Ray-Ban was moving only about 18,000 pairs of Wayfarers per
year.
The style was on the verge of being discontinued and then Tom
Cruise put them on and everything changed.
The year after Risky Business was released Wayfarer sales
surged to 3600 pairs.
By 1988 the number had climbed to four million holy moly.
Ray Ban struck deals with Hollywood specifically to
capitalize on this effect.
The brand estimated it paid to have its glasses placed in
somewhere between 50 and 160 films and TV shows throughout
the 80s.
But risky business was the lightning rod.
It was the moment where the Wayfair stopped being a relic of
previous era and became the definitive eyewear of a
generation what made it work wasn't just the placement it was
Tom Cruise it was that scene because sliding across a hard
wood hard hardwood floor in your socks is the fantasy of every
kid who's ever had a home to himself for the first time.
Glasses weren't just glasses they were the costume of freedom
they said when no one is watching this is who I am an
entire generation of teenagers looked at that screen and
thought I want to be that they were very popular sunglasses.
Yes if the Wayfarer was about coal the Ray Ban aviator and Top
Gun was about to be something bigger.
It was about mythology.
When Top Gun came out in 1986 it wasn't just a movie it was a
cultural event.
Directed by Tony Scott and produced with significant
collaboration from the U.S.
Navy the film was practically a two-hour recruiting
advertisement wrapped in a love story and a volleyball sequence.
At the center of it all was Pete Maverick Mitchell played by Cruz
again with Ray-Bans.
This time the gold framed aviators that had been developed
in the 30s for military pilots.
The aviators in Top Gun were already a military associated
style so the fit felt natural almost inevitable but the effect
was extraordinary.
Within a year of the film's release Ray-Band's aviator sales
had jumped by 40% more than that the style became permanently
encoded in American pop culture as the eyewear of choice for
anyone who wanted to project danger confidence and a certain
casual mastery of every situation.
Top Gun didn't just sell sunglasses it sold an archetype
the cocky pilot the leather jacket the aviators at the
bridge of the nose it was a look an attitude a whole aesthetic
ecosystem it was I swear to god your dad is just riding in
circles around under this window like he's been home all day he
did go on his bike it's worth pausing to appreciate what Ray
Ban managed to accomplish in the decade of the 80s using two
different films two different characters and two different
styles the brand effectively owned cinematic cool in a way
that no advertising company has replicated before or since the
Wayfarer for the rebellious kid and the aviator for the hero
together they covered the entire emotional spectrum of what it
meant to be effortlessly aspirationally stylish in Reagan
era America.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah Ray Band is definitely the only I think
sunglass brand I could name I don't I don't know it that's not
a thing.
No to know your well not for us no maybe fancy people.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe people who can afford Ray-Bands I had I had
pairs because people would leave them at the restaurant and never
come get them and so then they became mine.
But you know wasn't all it was also not my scene no in 1982 the
same year E.T.
was changing the candy aisle another film was changing what
was on America's feet Fast Time at Ridgemont High, Amy
Heckerlin's sharp, funny surprisingly tender portrait of
California teacher teenagers featured a character who had
become one of cinema's most beloved icons Jeff Spicoli, the
perpetually stoned ocean obsessed surfer dude played by a
very young Sean Penn.
Spicoli wore vans specifically the classic van slip on with a
checkerboard pattern that had become popular in Southern
California's skate and surf culture through the late 70s.
In the context of the film the shoes weren't a statement they
were just what Spacoli wore the way his wardrobe was inseparable
from his whole vibe, Hawaiian shirt vans a permanent
expression of sun adult serenity.
The authenticity was total but the effect on vans was
transformational.
The brand which had been founded in 1966 and was primarily a
regional California label suddenly had national
visibility.
Teenagers across the country who had never set foot on a
skateboard or within 500 miles of a Southern California beach
wanted those shoes.
The checkerboard slip-on became one of the defining accessories
of 80s youth culture a signal that you were plugged in that
you understood the vibe that you were at least aspirationally as
relaxed and unflappable as Jeff Spicoli.
What makes the van's story particularly interesting is what
it reveals about product placement and authenticity.
Vans didn't engineer that moment in a boardroom the brand was
simply there genuinely embedded in a culture that the filmmakers
were drawing from the placement worked precisely because it
wasn't placement in the mercenary sense it was
documentation and when audiences respond to it so powerfully it
pointed towards something that every great piece of pop culture
product integration has in common the brand has to belong
in the world of the story.
SPEAKER_05: The moment it feels imported the magic evaporates
yeah and those black and white checker I think they're still
the ones that everybody will wear.
SPEAKER_02: Now my first pair of vans were purple checkered high
tops because just because yeah I have to be different.
SPEAKER_05: I can't wear I had a pair of vans um you still wear
bands a few years ago and Converse as well they're too
flat and I have high arches and now I'm old and it really really
hurts my feet.
SPEAKER_02: I literally have a pair of Chuck Taylors at home
and I have um leopard print high top bands at home my last bands
a few years ago were the the tie up ones but the black with the
white on the side
SPEAKER_05: But um yeah.
I mean I guess I could get inserts, but wearing those flat
shoes is brutal.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
I just can't let go of my brands from well, you'll sacrifice your
feet for shoes.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I haven't been vlogging around in those
motherfuckers.
You were just complaining about the heavy shoes.
They are so heavy.
It's so funny because I actually on Facebook a cute pair of Docs
Mary Janes popped up today.
And I was like, ooh.
And then I was like, no, Heather says they're heavy.
They are heavy.
I'm not, they're too heavy.
That's like wearing weights.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I'm good.
SPEAKER_02: I can't let them go.
I can't let them go.
And I can't let Vans go.
And I can't let Chuck Taylors go.
But they're all built.
I also have I also have um Adidas, pink shell top.
Yes.
I love Adidas.
I'm trying to think of if I have any other ones.
I don't think I do.
I might have more than one pair of vans, though.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I think I I have a pair of white leather Adidas
right now and a pair of white leather Pumas.
SPEAKER_02: Don't I never had Pumas.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I just happened to randomly find these in a shoe
store and they were super cute and comfy, and I was like, okay.
SPEAKER_02: I go, I'll go to the Adidas store for my Adidas.
I still got the gun.
They're pink though.
Because I can't do I'm telling you.
I can't do it.
I have to be weird.
I have to be different.
Even if it kills your feet.
Even if it kills my feet.
I got Doc Martins that I wear to work, and they're not boots,
guys.
They're displaying shoes and they weigh 400 pounds and they
are bright ass pink.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they're super, super cute.
But they look heavy even to look at.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
So the heel, the soul was bumpy.
I'm too fragile.
I'm not tough like you.
You gotta do what you gotta do.
The Goonies is, to a certain generation, less a film than a
founding document.
Released in 1985, directed by Richard Donner from a story by
Steven Spielberg.
It's the movie that a generation of Watchkey kids claimed as
their own.
The story of a group of suburban misfits who go looking for
private treasure and find along the way something more important
about friendship and loyalty and the courage it takes to hold up.
Hold on to a childhood when the adult world is trying to pry it
from your fingers.
Quick question.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
Is your mom making pizza?
Because I swear I can smell pizza.
I don't know.
Maybe.
I really hope when we go downstairs there's pizza.
SPEAKER_02: Into this beautifully crafted adventure,
someone inserted a baby Ruth bar.
Chunk, the lovable, neurotic, oversharing member of the
Goonies, is practically defined by food.
And in the film's most memorable comic moment, he attempts to
communicate with Sloth, the monstrous yet gentle Fratelli
brother, through the universal language of chocolate and
caramel and peanuts.
He holds up a baby Ruth.
Sloth's eyes go wide.
In that moment, the candy bar becomes a symbol of connection,
a bridge between two outsiders who find each other across a
gulf of difference.
The reference itself was almost certainly a wink to a much older
gag, the infamous baby Ruth floating in the pool scene from
Caddyshack five years earlier, which had cemented the candy and
the cultural lexicon in an entirely different, far less
heartwarming way.
But the Goonies rehabilitated Baby Ruth, gave it warmth and
heart, and wrapped it in some the some the same nostalgic
affection that the film as a whole generated in every kid who
watched it.
The brand didn't need a turnaround story here.
What it got was something more lasting, embedding.
Baby Ruth became inseparable from a specific emotional
memory, the memory of being young and frightened and
exhilarated and surrounded by your people.
That's marketing you can't buy.
That's the gift cinema sometimes just hand you.
Um oh Nicole also, well, you're not getting a diary entry
because somebody forgot her diary.
SPEAKER_04: I did.
SPEAKER_02: Just tune in next to me.
My bad.
Yeah.
Some brands get one cinematic moment, Twinkie's got two,
separated by 26 years and a zombie apocalypse.
In Ghostbusters in 1984, Dr.
Egon Spengler uses a Twinkie as an analogy to explain the
unprecedented scale of psychokinetic energy building
beneath New York City.
This Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic
energy in the New York area, according to this morning's
sample.
It would be a Twinkie 35 feet long, weighing approximately 600
pounds.
It was one of the funniest lines in the film, and it lodged the
Twinkie into the vernacular of supernatural comedy in a way
that re resonated for decades.
The gag worked partly because of the Twinkie's existing
reputation as a kind of immortal, indestructible snack.
The urban legend that Twinkies last forever, playing perfectly
against the idea of unstoppable ancient panorama forces.
Have you had a Twinkie lately?
SPEAKER_05: I have.
And I was going to tell you that when we were kids, they were so
good.
They literally taste like preservatives.
Yes.
Like they are not good.
It feels like a preservative.
Makes me sad.
The cream is some weird texture.
Yeah, the cake is terrible.
Yeah.
It's stale.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a shame.
Yeah.
Kids these days don't know.
No.
SPEAKER_02: Then came Zombieland in 2009, which picked up that
exact mythology and ran with it.
In the post-apocalyptic road movie, Columbus, Jesse
Eisenberg's anxious, rule obsessed survivor, has a running
obsession with finding the last Twinkies on Earth.
Convinced that the snack's legendary shelf life means that
some must have survived the end of civilization.
The Twinkie functions in Zombieland almost as a symbol of
pre-apocalyptic normalcy.
The small, packaged, artificially preserved comfort
of the world that was.
SPEAKER_05: Zombieland is a really good movie.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think I've seen it.
Here's where the story takes a stranger turn.
In 2012, Hostess, the company that made Twinkies, declared
bankruptcy and announced it was shutting down.
America panicked.
People stockpiled Twinkies.
And in the cultural conversation around the brand's potential
extinction, Ghostbusters in Zombieland were cited
repeatedly.
The films have given Twinkies a pop culture half-life that
outlasted the company itself.
When Twinkies returned under new ownership in 2013, the comeback
was celebrated with genuine public warmth.
The the kind of snack cake with less cinematic history could
never have garnered.
SPEAKER_05: I think everything from hostess is gross, though.
SPEAKER_02: No.
Well, okay.
So here's the thing, guys.
SPEAKER_05: Their many powdered donuts are good.
SPEAKER_02: We're biased over here.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, true, true, true.
SPEAKER_02: Because we've always had tasty cakes.
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: And y'all are getting tasty cakes, but those
are not the tasty cakes that we know.
SPEAKER_05: Right.
Yeah, tasty cakes, same thing as Twinkies.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, they're fine.
They're good.
They're still good.
They're they're they're not that extreme.
Yeah.
But the tasty cakes we ate as kids were way, way, way better.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
The when when they used to come in wax paper and you couldn't
only get them within so many miles of Philadelphia, they were
that's hers potato chips.
Yes.
Red bag hers, hands down my favorite potato chips.
SPEAKER_05: Their barbecue is my favorite barbecue chip of all
the barbecue chips.
It's not, I mean, yeah.
Because it's salty, like it's supposed to be.
Too many barbecue chips make them sweet.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I don't like it when you make things that are
supposed to be salty, sweet.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_05: Like, don't put grapes and strawberries in
salad.
SPEAKER_02: Like yeah, different.
SPEAKER_05: Those two don't, yeah, no.
No mandarin oranges, none of that business.
I don't even want walnuts in my salad.
I don't either.
SPEAKER_02: Keep your nuts to yourself.
I was watching a TikTok this.
I was watching a TikTok the other day, and the guy starts
his TikTok off with, I'm the pickiest eater on the planet.
And I was like, no, you aren't.
And what he ate a raspberry.
I'm like, right there, you are not.
I already have known that you are not.
He's like, I'm today I'm gonna try a raspberry.
And I was like, I will never I don't even eat raspberries.
SPEAKER_05: No, they're hairy.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the seeds like it's too I it's I don't
know because I've never had one because they're hairy and I
can't get it.
SPEAKER_05: No, you're exactly right.
And you can't tell if one's good or not.
So you might get it in your mouth and it's like mushy in
your life.
SPEAKER_02: Um I like blackberries.
I like raspberry flavored things.
I don't I do like blackberries.
I would never so I I wanted to comment and be like, no, you're
not.
Because I'm 52 and have never put a raspberry in my face.
And never will.
I will go to the grave confident that I have never eaten a
raspberry.
Nor a blueberry.
Oh, no blueberries?
No, they're purple.
SPEAKER_05: I don't eat purple.
I think you would like blueberries.
That's a shame.
SPEAKER_02: They're not sweet.
Every time the bird, the bird eats them.
She loves them, but blueberries, yeah.
You can't.
They're purple on the outside and then a weird flesh color on
the inside, and I don't like that.
That's not right.
SPEAKER_05: So you don't eat grapes.
I green crap.
Green grapes.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Cotton candy grapes.
SPEAKER_05: Fucking god.
I love them.
As I was saying, I was like, I know she eats grapes.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, cotton candy green.
Nope, don't eat the purple ones.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Uh technically, this is older.
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
Oh.
Is on one level a stoner comedy about two friends on a munchies
fueled quest.
On another level, and this is what makes it genuinely
significant, it's one of the sharpest pieces of commentary on
identity, assimilation, and the immigrant experience in
mainstream American cinema of its era.
The fact that it comes wrapped in sliders and bottomless
appetite only makes it sharper.
For White Castle, the film was an X unexpected windfall.
The chain, one of America's oldest fast food brands, had a
footprint concentrated in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states,
although we don't have one here.
And I've never been to a White Castle.
SPEAKER_05: They are huge in Jersey.
Jersey, that's yes.
And I spent my life growing up in Jersey, so I spent my life
eating growing up eating uh White Castles, and they are
incredible.
unknown: Oh God.
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, I don't understand why we don't have one
here.
SPEAKER_02: It was largely invisible to the coastal
cultural conversations.
SPEAKER_05: Well, that would be why because I did when actually
when I went to St.
Louis, there was a White Castle.
And one of the one of my co-workers that I traveled with,
she's from Jersey.
So she took uh and we had talked about how much we love them.
Uh one day in the afternoon, she took a um a ride share.
Uber, yes, to um to the White Castle, and she came back and
she brought me to.
Oh I know.
SPEAKER_02: Uh Harold and Kumar changed that overnight.
The movie didn't just advertise White Castle, it elevated it to
into a destination, a symbol, a holy grail.
The chain reported significant sales increase in the wake of
the film's release, and more importantly, it acquired a new
kind of brand identity.
SPEAKER_05: Irreverent, beloved, cult certified.
And they do still taste just the same as they did when I was a
kid.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02: What's particularly interesting here is that White
Castle embraced the film's absurdist counterculture energy
rather than trying to sanitize it.
The chain leaned into its new reputation, eventually selling
sliders at retail, partnering with the franchise for later
installments, and generally positioning itself as one in on
the joke.
The fast food brand that got the most out of a movie, Stoner
Culture, did it by having a sense of humor about itself.
That's a lesson the marketing world would do well to take more
seriously.
You know who else does that?
Taco Bell.
Mm-hmm.
They fully lean into what they are.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they do.
I think I mentioned on here before, but I did a White Castle
um destination birthday once, yes.
Um, it was only a few years after I married my second
husband, and it was my birthday, and the closest White Castle was
in North Jersey.
It was three and a half hours away, and that's what I wanted
for lunch.
So we drove up there.
He had never had them before.
He took one bite and thought it was the most disgusting thing he
had ever eaten.
I've had them from the freezer section of the grocery store.
No, I don't buy the freezer ones.
I've never tried one.
I never want to.
SPEAKER_02: I've never had a real one.
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_05: In real life.
We'll have to add that to the list of things.
Man, we're just gonna do it.
I think you would like it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I would.
SPEAKER_05: It's a cheeseburger.
I don't get cheese online, but I that they are.
I grew up just eating the it's just a pickle, the fried onions,
the patty, and the button.
That's it.
SPEAKER_02: I will gladly pay you tomorrow for a cheeseburger
today.
SPEAKER_05: It's pay you Tuesday.
Pay you Tuesday.
I'll though it's tomorrow.
Either way, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger
today.
SPEAKER_02: I will gladly pay whatever.
I love that's my food.
I don't know if I said this before, but I had a book as a
kid where the kid, it was a bunny, turned into a
cheeseburger because he ate some of my cheeseburgers.
His head turned into a cheeseburger.
My mom got me that book specifically.
Because everyone was gonna say you're gonna turn into a
cheeseburger one day.
I haven't yet.
No, I I eat cheeseburgers pretty regularly.
You do, you do.
It's just a safe food.
It is.
I mean, you can't go anywhere without finding a burger.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and it's really hard to screw enough.
I mean, of course, there are good ones and there are not so
great ones, but it's like pizza.
It's like pizza.
I've had one pizza in my life that I literally couldn't eat.
Like me too.
It was so disgusting.
It was somewhere up in Wilmington.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, mine was at uh when I took your kids to um
Chuck E.
Cheese.
SPEAKER_05: I like Chuck E's.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I can't do it.
I let them eat it all.
And then I said, We're never coming back here.
Yeah.
Well, your daughter kind of helped with that too.
She didn't Chucky came out.
SPEAKER_05: I just made a clever for that like a month ago.
I was like, remember the time you climbed onto the table?
She's like, Shut up now.
Because Chucky came out to sing to a different group of kids
that were having a party.
She climbed onto the table.
SPEAKER_02: Her middle daughter has a real issue with real
phobia.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
She cried her whole way through Disney.
Yeah.
unknown: It's pretty sad.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I only have a couple more though.
Okay.
This one is in 1995.
Pixar changed animation forever, and along the way, it quietly
demonstrated something fascinating about product
placement in a context where every single element of the
frame is deliberate creative choice.
Toy Story is set in a world where toys are alive, and the
toys Pixar chose were not random.
Etch a sketch, Mr.
Potato Head, Slinky Dog, The Bucket of Green Army Men.
These were carefully selected real world brands, and their
inclusion required negotiation and licensing.
But more than that, each one was deployed with wit and specif
specificity.
Mr.
Potato Head, voiced by Don Rickles, is vain, wisecracking,
and deeply proud of his interchangeable parts.
A perfect comic deployment of the brand's real world identity
as a customizable toy.
Etchasketch appeared as a device for communication.
Its impermanent lines used to send a message in the story's
climax.
These weren't passive placements, the brands were
characters.
They had agency, personality, dramatic function, and the
effect was a kind of brand rehabilitation for products that
had been around for decades.
Etch a sketch since 1960, Mr.
Potato Head since 1952, but had begun to feel like artifacts of
an older childhood.
Tori's story didn't just remind audiences that these toys
existed and made them love them again.
Sales of both products spiked after the film's release.
A generation of parents who had grown up with these toys bought
them for their own children, completing a nostalgic loop that
the film had deliberately constructed.
Did you say that movie came out in 95?
Yeah.
Damn.
I know.
I had no idea.
I know.
I learned something fascinating.
It's gonna be my next episode, so I'm not gonna tell you what
it is, but I learned an interesting that I did not know
today.
My work bestie asked me we were talking about something, and
this subject came up, and he said, When did that start?
And I was blown away by the year it started.
I was significantly off.
I was like, oh, probably the 90s.
Wrong.
That's gonna be my next episode, though.
Okay.
Uh the Toy Store model would become enormously influential.
The idea that animation could be a premium vehicle for brand
integration, especially for products aimed at children and
the parents who buy for them.
But the key insight is that it only worked because Pixar never
let the commercial reality compromise the creative one.
The brands were in service of the story, and that, in the end,
is the cardinal rule of effective product placement in
cinema.
David Lynch's Blue Velvet in 1986 is not a film you associate
with warm brand moments.
It's a disturbing, hallucinatory, deeply unsettling
excavation of the violence and perversion lurking beneath the
manicured surface of American suburbia.
It is also unexpectedly the film that launched Paps Blue Ribbon
into a decades-long counterculture renaissance.
I didn't know PBR got its launch from there.
In one of the film's most charged scenes, Frank Booth,
Dennis Hopper's terrifying, unpredictable antagonist,
delivers a monologue about beer.
Heineken, he smarles.
Fuck that shit.
Paps Blue Ribbon.
It's an act of aggressive, almost violent brand loyalty,
and it comes from the film's most menacing character.
By any conventional marketing logic, this should have been
catastrophic for the brand.
A murderous, oxygen huffing sociopath as your spokesman, is
probably not what most CMOs are looking for.
What happened instead was that PBR became iconic.
The bar, the beer had been in decline for years, a working
class lager that had lost its footing as the American beer
market fragmented and went up market.
But Blue Velvet gave PBR an association with transgression,
with authenticity, with the rejection of mainstream taste.
Frank Booth chose PBR over Heineken, not despite his
menace, but as an extension of it.
And a generation of artists, musicians, filmmakers, and
self-consciously anti-establishment drinkers took
the cue.
By the late 90s and early 2000s, Paps Blue Ribbon was the
unofficial beer of hipster culture.
A cheap, unpretentious, and carrying a faint, beautiful
whiff of David Lynch's damaged American dream.
It is perhaps the most counterintuitive product
placement success story in cinema history.
The brand didn't pay for it, didn't plan for it, didn't
endorse it, and yet Blue Velvet saved Pap's Blue Ribbon, or at
least gave its cultural permission to save itself.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and PBR is still huge.
Like if I don't go to a lot of bars now, but a few years back,
places would have PBR for like a dollar.
You could get like a can for a buck.
The only other one that hipsters like better, I think, is Natty
Light.
Yeah.
That one has taken over, but PBR still has its place.
SPEAKER_02: I don't like beer.
SPEAKER_05: I do.
SPEAKER_02: I know.
I know you do.
So what do we make of all this?
What does it mean that a candy trail, pair of sunglasses, a
snack cake, fast food chain, a toy, and a cheap beer can be
transformed permanently, indelibly by the appearance in
the night in the right film at the right moment?
Part of the answer is simply about attention.
Movies command a kind of focused, willing, emotionally
open at emotionally open attention that no other medium
can quite replicate.
When you're sitting in a theater or curled up in front of a VHS
tip tape at eleven o'clock on a Friday, you are in the story in
a way that makes everything within it feel real and
meaningful.
A product in that context inherits some of the story's
reality.
It stops being an advertisement and becomes an artifact of a
world you believe in.
But the deeper answer is about identity.
The product that worked, the ones that became cultural
cornerstones rather than footnotes worked because they
told us something about who the characters were and by extension
who we were.
The Wayfarers told you Tom Cruise was cool in a very
specific, effortless, sun-drenched way.
The Vans told you Sean Penn understood something about life
that your parents didn't.
The Reese's Pieces told you Elliot was a sweet kid with good
instincts.
The PBR told you that Frank Booth rejected your consensus
reality entirely.
We are what we consume.
We always have been.
And the 80s and 90s, with their proliferating consumer
landscape, their brand saturated pop culture, their Gen X
audience of media savvy, advertising aware, slightly
cynical but deeply passionate moviegoers, were the crucible in
which product placement evolved from a clumsy commercial tactic
into something approaching an art form.
The brands that understood this or were lucky enough to stumble
into it didn't just get sale bumps.
They got meaning, they got decades of cultural resonance,
they got to live inside the memories of a generation.
Not bad for a 35-foot twinkie.
But yeah, I mean, I'm telling you, this is actually why I
wanted to do this because I forget what movie I had put on.
And I was like, wow, that's a lot of brand.
Like that is a lot of brand placement because it was just
like bam, like a can of coke right there.
SPEAKER_05: And it was, and I was like, and I and I think it
was like Domino's and like and then they went through a phase I
remember in movies where it would look like that product,
but it would have like a different label.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
Or pizza.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But now they don't even do that.
SPEAKER_02: I think what movie it was I was watching, but it
was like they were holding a can of Coke and then they opened
like a Domino's pizza box, and it was like totally it was
unnecessary.
It was completely unnecessary.
But I mean, and now, and then I that's what got me thinking.
I was like, you know, they just don't do that anymore.
SPEAKER_05: Nothing has a brand on it anymore.
Nope.
SPEAKER_02: I never even really realized it until you talked
about it.
And then, oh, if you watch The Shining, literally just walls of
advertisement.
SPEAKER_05: I almost watched that the other night.
I love the fucking show.
SPEAKER_02: It keeps popping up on my home page in October.
SPEAKER_05: My fire stick.
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, because it's October.
I'll watch it at some point.
That's a good movie.
I love it.
I know.
Anyway, yeah.
So I that's what gave me the idea because I was I was like,
that is and then I was like, I'm gonna do on product placement,
like why they did it then and why they didn't.
And then the first thing when I Googled like produce product
placement was Reese's pieces and how Reese's was going under, and
that saved it.
And I was like, I wonder how much then I went down.
SPEAKER_05: And we all got to uh benefit from it to go down the
rabbit hole with me.
Thank you.
Yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, I thought it was kind of fun.
It was.
I'm still not gonna eat Reese's pieces.
I'll eat them for you.
Okay.
I was eating Boston baked beans at my uh desk today.
Ew.
Gosh, I love those things.
I had to put them away.
Like I couldn't stop.
SPEAKER_01: No.
Oh, they're so new.
No.
SPEAKER_02: Some of the yeah, no.
It's going down like that rabbit hole of old candy and how it's
not around anymore.
And like candy cigarettes, obviously, they don't have
anymore.
But I like the bubblegum ones because they blew smoke.
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
SPEAKER_01: Weird.
SPEAKER_02: We're weird.
And then I started smoking, so yeah.
Thanks, candy cigarettes.
Thanks.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
Thank you.
Uh, you can find us where all the podcasts live.
You can uh go to our website, like whateverpod.com.
You can like share rate review on all the podcasting sites,
please.
Uh you can find us on all the socials and like us there.
You'd think by now that I would have come up with these.
I know, especially on your own week.
I know.
And I don't think of it until this exact moment.
All right.
You can send us an email about which is better.
Mm's are speechless.
That's a good one.
To like whatever pod at gmail.com or don't like
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Bye.