Michael Bay’s Transformers movies have been a rollercoaster – from the days of Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, through to Mark Wahlberg and dinosaur robots, and then onto the prequels set in the 80s and 90s. There are elements about the franchise to both love and hate, but one aspect that is generally agreed upon as a low point is the ridiculous amount of product placement.
The Transformers movies as a whole are pretty bad for turning into commercials at times, but this went into overdrive in the fourth film in the action movie franchise – Age of Extinction. This was the one that introduced the dinobots, so we can forgive some things, but the product placement was off-the-charts bad in this one.
As Reddit user ithinkther41am has pointed out, Trans4mers had an Oreo branded vending machine transforming into a robot (probably a nod to the Mountain Dew one, named Dispensor, from the first movie). There’s also a scene where Stanley Tucci demonstrates the powers of ‘transformium’ by forming the metal into a Beats by Dre pill speaker – held up close to the camera so everyone can see the logo, of course.
In yet another example from Age of Extinction, the new star of the franchise, Mark Wahlberg, crashes into a Bud Light truck and “they even pan the camera over the spilled bottles on the ground, with their logos perfectly oriented, and perfect condensation on the bottle. It’s absurd.” Wahlberg also angrily picks up a bottle and drinks it because his flying alien spaceship has caused a road rage incident.
Stanley Tucci features in another scene, where he panics and drinks some Chinese brand milk to calm himself down in a close-up shot where the logo takes up a good sixth of the screen.
Check out our interview with the Transformers 7 director and find out what we know so far about Transformers 8. We’re also looking forward to Deadpool 3 and Avatar 3.