I don't know if I've become more sensitive, but product placement seems to have gone over the top lately.

I watch Trust Me on TNT, a show about folks in an ad agency. Each episode seems to include them designing a campaign for a real product. They not only use and mention the product in the ep, they often show the ads the team makes. Heinekan, Dove, and Buick have been culprits...

I also watch Bones. This week they were dragging off a dead body from a funeral and one woman went to grab the vehicle. She came back and noted one car was locked so she got another woman's Matrix (I think that's the make)....if that weren't enough, she then commented on it being plenty roomy for the stiff!

Thoughts on product placement? I'm really kinda okay with it when there's a subtlety to it but the in-your-face style almost makes me have a backlash ("I'm not buying that") response.

The amount of product placement I put up with depends on what the network's plans for the show are, and obviously how much I like the show. There are 3 egregious examples I can think of off the top of my head:

Chuck: There have been a lot of blatant Subway placements in the last few weeks, but in this case I don't mind, because at this point I'll take anything that saves the show. And, one brilliant forum poster (Serendipity, I think it was?) conceived her Finale and Footlong campaign to encourage folks to actually spend real money at Subway in support of the show. It's blatant and over the top when Big Mike sings the praises of the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Footlong™, but somehow it doesn't bother me. Whatever keeps the show on the air. This brings me to..

Damages: This season saw major product placement for Cadillac. The SUV was actually a major plot point during the second half of the season, and I didn't care that they kept name-checking Cadillac at that point. The bit that got me was in the dealership when one character was buying the car; there was a full 45 seconds where they described the features and panned lovingly over the interior. I thought it *was* a commercial at first, and picked up the remote to skip it. Sorry Damages, that was probably a bit too much for me. Lastly, there was..

Eureka: Wow, Degree Antiperspirant. I just don't even know what to say. They even worked it into the plot that Degree was 'sponsoring' the research facility itself, but the plots that went with their sponsorship of the show were just ridiculous. It was almost enough to actually drive me away from the show, if it wasn't for the adorable Colin Ferguson. I will certainly not be buying Degree any time soon.

I did enjoy 30 Rock's in-your-face attitude about it one episode (although most other eps they're pretty shameless): "That Verizon Wireless service is just unbeatable. If I saw a phone like that on TV, I would be like, 'Where is my nearest retailer so I can get one?' *looks directly at camera* Can we have our money now?"

That's kinda awesome.

There's already a thread for product placement in the Superlatives sub-forum here.

Apologies.