Product Placement ...is Nothing Sacred?

First let me thank my wife and my sister in law for nudging me off the slacker sofa and back onto the blogger train.

Now on with the show. Product placement.

I will concede that I Do Realize that it is expensive to produce a major film, especially an animated film. But is it necessary to draw in product placement? Apparently so, I guess to get voice work from Drew Barrymore and Will Ferrell requires a little more than faith in the box office receipts. I took my son to a matinee today, two tickets to Curious George, $13.... One Medium popcorn and one medium Diet Soda, there went the credit card. You know the rest... Priceless.

Here we go, we found a nice seat, sat down to share our popcorn and soda... on with the previews. It was nice, no commercials for things that aren't sold at the snack booth like Mac and Cheese, or Mercury Cougars, or Madden 2009. Just simple ordinary coming attractions.

On with show... "look Daddy Curious George! He's silly!, Curious George is pretty cool Daddy! I want to see it again Daddy!"

Well I don't want to give away any plot points here... so

[Spoiler Alert! Do not read any further if you don't want to know what happens until you get a chance to see it yourself.]

On the cargo ship George knocks over several crates of fresh fruit... DOLE fruit.

Later, when the Man in the Yellow Hat rushes to rescue George before he is sent back to the jungle, he speeds off in a Volkswagon (I guess he was obeying His own Speed).

The funny thing is that these two product logos were drawn with a much higher level of detail than the backgrounds and even the characters. That is the thing that kind of irked me... I'll allow the space for marketing, and I know it didn't mean a hill of beans to the kids in the theatre whether it was Dole or Green Giant, Volkswagen or Ford (although my son would probably recognized if it had been an Explorer), but draw your "subliminal" advertising in the same fashion as the rest of the film, thats all I'm saying. Other wise fade to black cue a real commercial and then return to flick.

Eaze on down... Eaze on down the road....