The Worst Product Placement Moments in Film History
Discover the worst examples of product placement in movies, featuring scenes that pause the plot to showcase brands like McDonald’s, Google, and Chevrolet.
Product placement is nothing new. You probably see it everywhere on TV, in movies, and especially on social media. When it comes to movies, most of the time, it's fairly harmless. You might see a soda can on a table, a car brand in a chase scene, or a character casually holding an iPhone. But every now and then, a movie slams on the brakes and turns into a full-blown advertisement. There are some incredibly jarring shifts out there in all sorts of movies, from “so bad, its good” movies like Mac & Me to box-office and awards darlings like Barbie. Here are some of the most egregious examples of product placement that completely hijack the movie for a brief, bewildering commercial break.
Mac and Me (1988) – McDonald's and Coca-Cola
This movie is infamous for quite a few reasons - being a blatant rip-off of E.T., and being part of a hilarious running gag between Paul Rudd and Conan O”Brien among them. But it is equally infamous for its horrific product placement.
Mac and Me doesn’t just sneak in some branding - it lives it. The film was partially financed by McDonald’s (or at least via connections the producers had with the fast food chain) and it shows. For starters, the alien character is literally brought back to life by Coca-Cola, and one of the most surreal scenes in the movie is a full-blown dance number inside a McDonald’s restaurant, featuring Ronald McDonald himself. The scene goes on for several minutes, with breakdancing, cheerleading, and an insane party atmosphere that adds nothing to the movie. Even the movie title references the famous “Big Mac”.
It almost feels like the filmmakers tried to create something cool for kids with brands they could relate to, or create an E.T.-style Reese’s Pieces moment. But it was just a total failure that still has us laughing all these years later.
The Italian Job (2003) – MINI Coopers
The 2003 remake of The Italian Job is a pretty slick heist movie (I still prefer the original) but it often feels like an extended commercial for MINI Coopers. The timing makes perfect sense, because BMW acquired the MINI brand in 2001 and started sales in 2002 after a redesign of the classic car. The Italian Job coming around in 2003, having filmed directly after the relaunch of the MINI Cooper, makes me think there was some extra payment going on behind the scenes from BMW. It is one thing to use a branded car in a movie - lots of them do it - but this was egregious.
The MINI Coopers are used as key elements in the crew's getaway plan, which makes sense in context and is faithful to the original film. But it is the way they’re filmed, with glowing attention to their compact design, agility, and a focus on branding, that feels like a straight up marketing campaign. There are lovingly framed shots of the vehicles weaving through tight alleyways, jumping curbs, and stealing the spotlight from the human actors. It’s as if the movie is constantly whispering, "You want one of these, don’t you?" The cars became the main focus of the movie and distracted from the actors in a way that the original film did not.
Barbie (2023) – Chevrolet EVs
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is full of satire and clever commentary on consumerism, but even it couldn’t escape a mid-movie car commercial. During a chase scene in the real world, Margot Robbie’s Barbie escapes from the Mattel HQ in a bright blue Chevrolet Blazer EV driven by America Ferrera’s character Gloria. The car gets extended glamour shots, and is actually filmed in a totally different style than the rest of the movie. I saw this in theaters and it was jarring, completely taking me out of the film. I swear, its the same footage they ended up using for actual Chevy commercials with a Barbie tie-in during the film’s gigantic box office run.
The rest of the film is so self-aware that this scene sticks out as oddly earnest and out of place. For a movie poking fun at brand obsession, the product placement here is surprisingly unironic. However, there is a conspiracy theorist in me that thinks Greta Gerwig did it on purpose. Here she is making this anti-consumerism movie, and she probably got told it needed this sequence, so she just said “f*ck it” and let them add in a commercial. I have to believe she knows enough to know how bad it looked, and it must have been done in some protest of the studio and brand interference in the film.
The Internship (2013) – Google
This movie is basically a two-hour commercial for working at Google. Starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, it follows two out-of-touch guys trying to reinvent themselves through a tech internship. The entire film takes place at the Google campus, showcasing everything from nap pods to free snacks to the open-concept office lifestyle. The product placement goes far beyond visuals and might be the most egregious example on this list. The characters literally explain Google’s company values and internal tools like they’re reciting from a corporate brochure. It is basically Google: The Movie.
This isn’t entirely unheard of, as there have been films financed by the US Military that serve as expensive recruitment tools, like Top Gun (sponsored by the US Navy) or Act of Valor (also the Navy, and used active-duty Navy Seals in production). But to have a film that serves as a recruitment tool for a tech company is pretty bizzare. The entire movie could have been made without a mention of Google and still had the same effect, like Silicon Valley did on HBO. The Internship is really less a comedy and more of a Google onboarding video with a few punchlines sprinkled in. And it even sucks at doing that.
Power Rangers (2017) – Krispy Kreme
The plot of Power Rangers somehow hinges on a Krispy Kreme location. The villain, Rita Repulsa, is obsessed with the donut shop because the magical MacGuffin is buried beneath it. This leads to several scenes where characters say “Krispy Kreme” out loud, walk past the glowing storefront and signage, and even stop during a world-ending battle to savor a donut. I’m not kidding. At one point, Rita literally sits down to eat one while chaos unfolds around her. It’s absurd product placement, made even more egregious by how central the brand is to the film’s climax, which is never a good thing.
Power Rangers is a strong brand with a loyal following, but this movie flopped, and I can’t help but think this had something to do with it. It feels like the movie was built around whatever funding and requests they were getting from Krispy Kreme, and that will always hinder the creatives who are just trying to make a good movie. It is also another example of a movie that could have had the brand removed and changed nothing about the story. This could have been any donut shop, or any other location, and the movie remains the same. Shoehorning in Krispy Kreme to every scene only made a bad movie even worse.
So there you have it - the worst of the worst. These cringey moments don’t just feature products, they celebrate them, highlight them, and overuse them, often at the expense of the story, pacing, and tone. When a movie turns into a commercial, it’s hard not to roll your eyes, even if you suddenly crave a doughnut, a Big Mac, or a MINI Cooper. What’s one of your favorite examples of bad product placement? Let me know in the comments!
Transformers 4 the Bud Light in your face 🙄🙄🙄🙄 so cringe
I loved how Wayne's World 2 poked fun at this unfortunate trend. My favorite product placement had to be the Reece's Pieces used as an important plot device in E.T. much to M&Ms chagrin.