If there’s anything I can’t stand in film and television, it’s blindingly obvious product placement. Real-world products can make a movie or TV show more realistic, but when these products are gratuitously placed, it’s distracting and annoying.

There’s far too many incidents to list here, so I’m just going to point out some of my favorites, which are some of the worst examples of product placement I’ve seen.

• The Wizard. This 1989 film was essentially one gigantic advertisement for Nintendo. This was made abundantly clear up front, with the trailers proudly touting the Nintendo World Championships. Still, the fact that this giant commercial was actually released and made money was ridiculous, as the movie really wasn’t that good. (I’ll concede that the “He touched my breast!” scene was hilarious, though.)

• The 4400. In the second season episode “Rebirth,” one of the main characters was reminiscing with his old Korean War buddies about a fellow soldier who had recently passed away. While in the bar having drinks, they mentioned that the soldier “loved his Buds.” That’s not too bad, but what followed was much worse. One of the group mentioned how beer cans nowadays looked a lot like the old ones from their wartime days…complete with a closeup shot of a Budweiser anniversary can. Give me a goddamned break.
• Transformers. I’m talking about the 2007 film, mind you, not the cartoon; the latter was specifically designed to be a commercial to sell its accompanying toyline, as were many cartoons in the 1980s. The film had a toyline, as well, but in this case, the role was reversed: the toys promoted the film. Anyway, that’s not even the example I want to mention! There’s plenty of product placement in this movie, especially from General Motors, but the biggest offender is Panasonic. In one scene, a computer scientist picks up a memory card in order to copy a sensitive file. She holds the card up to the damned camera, so that we can all see the Panasonic logo emblazoned on it before putting the card into the computer! Are you fucking kidding me?
• Eureka. Syfy’s flagship comedy/scifi show got hit with a nasty dose of product placement in the first half of its third season. The show picked up Degree antiperspirant as a sponsor, and company logos were shown throughout the show. This was distracting, but the show’s writers managed to work it into the storyline with a bit of humor, showing that the Degree products actually came from the eponymous town in the first place. However, things really went overboard with the episode “Here Come the Suns.” Here, the show’s protagonists had to apply special heatproof gel (made by Degree, of course) in order to brave the high temperature from an artificial sun. As it turns out, having an episode that featured a Degree product saving the day was part of the sponsorship contract! This annoyed the shit out of the writers, but they did their best with what they had. Later episodes of Eureka featured blatant advertising from networking giant Cisco Systems, but nothing was bad as that Degree shit.
• Doctor Who. Believe it or not, product placement worked its way into the long-running British science fiction show, and it’s one of the most annoying examples ever. The 2005 episode “Bad Wolf” was in its entirety a commercial for the game show The Weakest Link, complete with hostess Anne Robinson appearing as a robotic version of herself. There were some Doctor Who plot elements running through the episode, sure, but the crux of the matter is that it was an advertisement, plain and simple. It was probably the most insulting episode of a television show I’ve ever seen. (And yes, I’ve seen “Love & Monsters,” but that one just hurt my brain rather than insulted me.)

I understand that product placement is how extra money for a film or show’s budget can be made, but often it’s just glaring. If someone’s casually drinking a can of Coke, that’s realistic and unobtrusive. But if that person holds up the can so we can clearly see the logo as the camera zooms in…come the fuck on. Stop insulting our intelligence. As a matter of fact, advertising like that will make me less likely to buy your stupid-ass product.