Reverse Product Placement

Everyone by now knows about product placement. Sometimes it's done well, as in the case of Reese's Pieces and ET.



Other times...not so much.



By the way, I remembered this scene from Demoltion Man differently. I'm pretty sure the version I saw had Taco Bell. Thankfully, Wikipedia was able to verify my sometimes shaky memory. Apparently the European version of the film used Pizza Hut and the American version used Taco Bell. Completely irrelevant, but a neat little factoid for your friends.

Anyways, the reason I'm talking about product placement at all is because I read something at Brandweek about a relatively new concept called "reverse product placement". With RPP, fictional products taken from TV or movies are made into real products for actual purchase. 7-11 got involved with this somewhat during promotion for the Simpsons Movie and now it appears that "Slurm", the drink of choice for the animated series Futurama, may soon be made for real use. If this does eventually come through, I'll be sure to get a can.