I made it to the Big Mouth Billy Bass part of the Sopranos
These were the go-to joke gift. Your grandparents had one, your boss had one, the shady sales guy at the car dealership had one. There was one in an episode of the OG British Office. If you haven't seen it, it's just a plastic robot toy fish covered in cheap airbrushed rubber that sings various songs while moving its mouth and head. They were hilarious for about 20 minutes.
Lately we have been watching the Sopranos. Last night we got to the episodes with the Big Mouth Billy Bass. The show uses the toy fish to trigger Tony's trauma about an event in the previous season. This show tends to use brand name things like Coke, Lays, Mercedes etc to make a subtle point about them having lots of money while having to cosplay as regular people to appear less conspicuous. I get it. So when the Billy Bass toy shows up, given the year it was filmed, I didn't see it as product placement but as a legit thing everyone had at the time and thought was hilarious.
But after thinking it over for a moment, and even though it was a great use of the toy to move the story, I got to wondering if it was just an odd product placement. So I googled it and apparently the show's creators didn't do cheesy product placements and the appearance of the toy fish is genuine. That made me fell better, but the fact that I googled if it was or not was off putting.
Everyone I follow on instagram for genuine info eventually tries to sell me something. Every youtube channel has affiliate links. That's how these things work, that's how they can afford to keep making videos on how to change the brakes on my bicycle. I expect media to sell me things, it's fine. I now they are doing it. They have little "includes paid advertisement" at the top.
I bring this up because when I'm writing stuff and want to include specific items to show the reader what the characters tastes are or flex knowledge of something in the story. If you read the Millennium Trilogy you'll often run into a bit where Larsson will basically write down entire grocery lists of stuff Lisbeth buys. My favorite one is in the second or third book where she gets new apartment and has to buy furniture. Larsson literally lists a thousand dollars worth of real IKEA furniture that was available at the time. Those and the literal grocery lists (5 green apples, a case of cokes, 3 Billy's pizzas, carton of Marlboro Lights...) were some of my favorite parts of the books. This made it super fun when watching the Swedish mini series because they literally were able to show exact vehicles and items they had in the books like easter eggs.
But doing that today screams product placement and affiliate marketing. Or worse, in the case of Larsson's grocery lists, AI slop. In my fantasy RPG isekai story when the characters loot a chest or mob I can easily sit and list the items without issue. But if I want to show what's in the fridge at my hacker thriller story I have to suddenly pause and make sure everything feels genuine. If I so much as mention Taco Bell will the readers be suspicious?
Does this kind of thing bother yall when reading/watching contemporary stuff?
As a sick joke I have added affiliate links in this post.