Anybody notice near the beginning of the Sept. 30 episode that George was eating from a bag of (I believe they're called) Rold Gold Pretzels? That's the product Jason Alexander is plugging in his latest commercial, in which he plays a very George-like character.
Coincidence? I hope so.
Kevin
Oh, I'm sure it's *not* a coincidence, but I doubt that it's a free plug. There's a phrase (which escapes me at the moment) for when they do this kind of thing in movies, and I guess it's also done in TV shows, but not as often.
Gail
It's called "product placement" and it's now a multi-million dollar industry, at least or films. I find it a little off-putting in TV-land, given that we already have to sit through commercials pushing stuff at us, though I'd probably buy ;) an argument that these items are just part of the environment now -- it *would* look rather contrived for the prop department to make a mock-up of a pretzel bag or some other product that didn't have a brand name just for the show. Oh well, capitalism marches on, devouring voraciously everything in its path....
Sean
[email] writes:
Actually, I would prefer to see products with names that I see in the stores. It looks more realistic than seeing "BEER" or "SODA" (a la Repo Man). The think I didn't like about the way that Jason showed the bag was that it sort of seemed like he was making a point of showing it. (Actually, I'm sure that's what he was doing.) That I don't like. If it just happened to be on a shelf or if you could tell it was Rold Gold by the packaging but the name wasn't so prominent, I wouldn't mind so much.
Gail
[the following text is heavily editted, so I've left out the ...s]
wrote:
Believe this! I march with Maryland's marching band and we just replaced
our water coolers, which said 'Gatorade', with 'Coca-Cola' coolers. Coke
just became a big sponsor to the campus, buying lots of advertising on
various campus billboards, scoreboards, etc., and even (apparently) water
coolers. Now, if they were actually filled with Coke instead of water, then that
would be a big deal... heh...-Me
To those who had questions about the Rold Gold pretzels appearing on the show. I thought it was obvious that they were simply making fun of the pretzel commercials in a not too subtle way. I found it quite funny.