Product placements in TV shows and movies are big business. After all, while some of the most famous examples, like the then-unknown Reese's Pieces getting a prominent slot in 1982's E.T., have offered genuine free exposure, it's now quite common for a quick glimpse of a product in a blockbuster to cost a brand millions.
But not all product placements are a success, with some costing businesses a whole lot more than just a placement fee...
Read on for our rundown of the worst-ever product placement flops in movies and TV. All dollar amounts in US dollars.
It's likely that the team at California Raisins imagined that the appearance of their fruity snack in the product placement-heavy Back to the Future would boost their sales in the same way that E.T. had turned Reese's Pieces into a must-have treat back in 1982.
It was on this basis that they spent as much as $50,000 (£41.8k) to film makers Universal Studios, with expectations high that Marty McFly would be shown enjoying raisins at some point in the movie.
However, it proved to be a case of expectation versus reality. In the movie, the extent of the product placement was a billboard ad for California Raisins. The ad was briefly visible behind a homeless man who's seen snoozing on the streets when McFly returns to the 1980s and finds himself surrounded by abandoned shopfronts.
The excuse given by the film's producers for not providing a more positive placement was that "raisins don't photograph well".
The board at California Raisins was understandably livid with the quality of their placement and demanded (and received) their money back.
In 1996, the makers of Jerry Maguire made a deal with Reebok to feature a fake commercial at the end of the movie.
The comedy sees sport agent Jerry's only client, Rod Tidwell, become a star after he has a near-death experience. Tidwell lands a much-coveted endorsement from Reebok, with the sportswear brand inspired in real life to request the fictional advertisement as part of the plot. The ad would star none other than the Oscar-winning Cuba Gooding Jr., who played Tidwell.
In return for the advert, Reebok agreed to provide shoes, cash, and clothing to TriStar Pictures (a division of Sony Pictures) worth a grand total of $1.5 million (£1.26m).
When Reebok viewed the finished movie, however, the brand had received just one mention – and there was no spoof commercial.
The mention in question featured Tidwell complaining: "[Expletive] Reebok. All they do is ignore me. Always have."
The omission of the ad led to a $12 million (£10m) lawsuit in 1997, which was settled without either of the involved parties sharing details of the agreed terms.
During Friends' second season, Diet Coke spent a whopping $30 million (£25.1m) to cash in on the growing popularity of the TV show.
The promo set-up featured the drink in a "whodunnit" advertisement that ran alongside the show and followed a police investigation into who stole Monica's can of Diet Coke from the fridge. An accompanying competition gave viewers the chance to win a trip to California.
It worked out well for Diet Coke: after all, Friends was becoming must-watch viewing among twenty-somethings at the time and sales of the drink, which were already rising, continued to grow following the TV exposure.
The same couldn't be said for Friends itself, however. Viewers were turned off by the obvious stunt, which was described by The Chicago Tribune as "The One Where the Show Crosses the Line from Promiscuity into Prostitution".
Ratings dived and the sitcom came close to disaster, with viewing figures starting to slide away in their millions.
The cast considered calling it quits but writers Marta Kauffman and David Crane persuaded them to hold out and the rest is TV history. Diet Coke did continue to feature in the show, albeit in a slightly less dramatic fashion.
Starring Adam Sandler, fantasy comedy Little Nicky (2000) features references to Popeye's Chicken throughout.
In the opening scene, for example, Sandler, who plays the Devil's "good guy" son, declares that Popeye's is "delicious".
A later brand reference is decidedly more dubious. Sandler's character conjures up a bucket of Popeye's for a group of evil demons, one of whom eats it, turns to camera, and exclaims: "Popeye’s chicken is the shiznit!"
The scene inspired a multitude of memes but was widely mocked for its crassness.
To make matters worse, Little Nicky was nominated for the Stinkers Bad Movie Award for most annoying product placement in 2000, although it ultimately lost out to FedEx and Wilson Sporting Goods in Cast Away.
When Hawaii Five-0 was rebooted in 2010, Microsoft executives had recently rebranded their search engine as Bing and were keen to start making gains on industry leader Google.
They asked producers of the CBS cop drama to insert some product placement, with the finished footage leaving commentators wondering if the show was little more than a Microsoft commercial.
In one notable scene, Daniel Dae Kim’s character suggests his partner should "Bing it" when she fails to believe something he tells her. She pulls out her smartphone and a lingering close-up shows her navigate the search engine.
The result of this product promotion distracted viewers from the actual storyline of the show, instead leaving them wondering what the unfamiliar word 'Bing' meant.
Mike Nichols, Corporate VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Bing, conceded that perhaps it was too early to declare 'Bing' a new verb, drily observing: "I don’t think we’re even ready to set it as an objective."
A slightly different type of product placement fail happened when luxury French fashion brand Louis Vuitton was given a free mention in The Hangover Part II (2011).
In the movie, whacky Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis) is oblivious to the fact that his "Louis Vuitton" bag is actually a fake. Mispronouncing the designer's name, he strictly warns the other characters to be "careful, [because] that is a Louis Vuitton".
While the scene had clearly been included for light-hearted entertainment, it quickly became apparent that neither Louis Vuitton nor movie distributors Warner Bros. were laughing...
Louis Vuitton responded to the freebie product placement by filing a trademark infringement suit against the studio, alleging trademark dilution, false designation of origin, and unfair competition.
To make matters even worse, the fake bag in the movie was made by Diophy, a bag company that Louis Vuitton was already taking legal action against.
Luckily for Warner Bros., however, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2012. The federal judge decided that Louis Vuitton hadn't made a strong enough case that the movie's 25-second-long fake bag scene could really confuse consumers.
The idea for 2013 movie The Internship came about after actor Vince Vaughn decided it would be interesting to create an entire buddy movie that centred around the famous culture of Google's HQ.
Google was excited at the prospect and offered Vaughn an insider's view of the company in exchange for complete creative control over all their product placements.
This decision effectively meant that Vaughn had no creative input over anything relating to Google, resulting in a movie that some have described as a "two-hour advert" for the tech giant.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the audience was not in the mood for a commercial that long. The movie flopped.
Matters were made worse by the movie's release being overshadowed by the revelation of global wiretapping. Due to the involvement of various tech giants, Google's image – along with the rest of Silicon Valley – was tarnished in the public's eye.
All in all, The Internship reached a disappointing fourth place on the box office list on its weekend of release, despite its $60 million (£50.3m) budget and massive promo campaign.
The fourth instalment of the Transformers franchise, 2014's Age of Extinction promised to be a major audience winner.
Big-name brands were lining up to pay six-figure fees to Paramount Pictures, one of the movie's production companies, in a bid to get in on the action.
Along with well-known brands like Oreo and Bud Light, Chinese travel company Wulong Karst Tourism paid $750,000 (£628,402) just to see their logo appear in the movie.
Incidentally, the movie was a huge hit in China, making $320 million (£268.1m) at the box office.
However, the memo about including the tourism company's logo didn't quite reach Paramount and, for some reason, the finished film completely missed it out.
That wasn't the only case of disappointment: some of the other paid-for product placements were skipped too.
A disappointed Wulong Karst Tourism sued Paramount for a hefty $27.7 million (£23.2m), and in 2016 the movie studio was ordered to pay the tourism brand around $295,000 (£244k).
When Samsung decided it wanted to supply smartphones for characters to use in 2015's Jurassic World, there was no reason for Universal Pictures to turn down the offer.
Samsung announced the deal and launched into an impressive partnership with the franchise, which included premiering exclusive content on its SUHD TVs. Samsung-branded phones and tablets featured throughout the film, and the main park setting even had its very own Samsung-sponsored building.
In theory, the incredible array of product placement opportunities that Samsung received should have been great. But the dinosaurs had other ideas...
Samsung's visibility was perfectly juxtaposed with the series of tech disasters that the movie's characters found themselves facing.
For example, two of the younger characters nearly met gory ends when their Samsung smartphones stopped making calls, while a variety of Samsung-branded security products allowed a murderous dinosaur to escape.
So nope, we don't imagine it was quite what Samsung had in mind when they signed on the dotted line...
The execs at home-fitness equipment and media company Peloton must have been thrilled to learn that their exercise bike was going to be featured in HBO's much-anticipated Sex and the City TV sequel And Just Like That... in 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic had seen Peloton enter the mainstream, and a juicy free placement in a show tipped to be as popular as And Just Like That... should have spelt further success for the brand.
Unfortunately for Peloton, its famous workout equipment appeared in just one episode. Lead character Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, is shown completing a workout on his Peloton bike before falling to the floor from a heart attack.
Mr. Big died and the brand's share price took a similar turn for the worse, crashing by 16% in the days following the show's broadcast.
HBO had kept the details of Big's demise a secret, although it might have been an idea to forewarn Peloton that one of their products was about to be implicated in a character's death...
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