The Future of Product Placement (by Greg)
Created by Strip Generator, sponsored by new Degree Men’s Mega Ultra BOOM Antiperspirant with Sweat-Rape(TM) Odor Protection.
So a few of us were watching “Monday Night Football”, (in quotes because it was a preseason game and therefore not technically football), and somehow we got to talking about sponsorships and product placement, and I don’t know how but eventually we decided the near future would see athletes being paid handsomely by corporate sponsors to perform hired hits on other competing athletes. I posited a scenario in which a third-string football player, to make ends meet, would get $1,000,000 from, I don’t know, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, to sheer the opposing quarterback’s kneecap off with his razor sharp cleats. Don’t ask me why Kraft would want that done, we didn’t get that far into the discussion before we were convulsing with laughter at the very idea, but it was enough to inspire the comic you see above.
On second though, I bet I could come up with a reason! I’ll put it on a pork chop and see if it floats. Let’s see…suppose Mr. Tom Brady had spurned the advances of the Kraft company in favor of a competing boxed pasta foodstuff. Who makes Rice-a-roni? Those guys. And maybe they could only afford to get his backup. Maybe one day they walk up to Johnny Third-String Defensive Lineman For The Jets in a dark alley and give him an offer he can’t refuse. He accepts, needing grocery money, gets into the next game and slices Brady’s leg tendons to holy hell. Johnny sees a big payday, before being kicked out of the NFL forever which is fine because he would have been cut anyway at the end of the season, and Kraft suddenly have themselves the starting QB for the Patriots telling America which boxed pasta is the cheesiest.
A little far-fetched, you say? Nothing like that could happen outside of science fiction, you dare to utter audibly? Perhaps. But if you can have an entire television series sponsored by a deodorant, with its products featured prominently within the storyline itself, I don’t think it’s such a far leap to corporate sponsored drive-bys.