Comments on: Egregious Product Placement: Toyota & Bones

By: Jane

Jane — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:35:31 +0000

I’m afraid I didn’t think Angela’s reasons ‘work’ at all. I found her explanation stilted and like she was reading from a brochure. Last week’s episode showed Bones driving a Prius. This is a departure from her standard car, and we rarely see her driving Booth, so I’m guessing this was a plot element designed to incorporate the product placement.

I thought the product placement last week was poor, but tonight’s was extremely poor because I didn’t feel it was appropriate for the character or plot at all.

By: Erin Copple Smith

Erin Copple Smith — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:33:12 +0000

That’s a great point, Kristina–and I absolutely agree that the Toyota ads are all about irony. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t feature “Mommy” and “Daddy” “liking” the van and dubbing it the “swagger wagon”, right? Rather, they’d be featuring young childless adults looking cool in a minivan.

But, ultimately, I do think that the choice of Angela to own a Sienna (even if not explicitly laid out by Toyota in their deal with the producers–and I very much doubt it was laid out by Toyota, mind you) was an excellent one. In terms of the series, Angela is really the only logical choice–Booth drives a government-issued SUV, Bones would never be caught dead in a minivan, nor would the other squints. The only other possibility would be Cam, but of course, she actually has custody of a teenager, so she’s mom-esque, anyway. Angela is, in fact, an artist and a little flaky–giving her explanation of the vehicle some credibility within the narrative.

For these reasons, I have to emphatically nod with and underline your last sentence above–I think this is absolutely what this moment is doing.

Thanks so much for the great food for thought!!!

By: Kristina Busse

Kristina Busse — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:43:51 +0000

That’s an interesting reading but one about whose success I’m ultimately skeptical. As a minivan-driving soccer mom, I look at the ad as incredibly ironic, trying to bridge the distance between who we have become (have always been?) and how we’d like to be seen (see ourselves). To me the ad reads as a somewhat sardonic mocking of the very people who buy minivans yet don’t see themselves as minivan drivers–even when they are…

Then again, if Toyota wants to sell the pretense of coolness to the very customers who clearly are not–then maybe Angela is indeed as you suggest the perfect person to drive it: short-circuiting the pretense while nevertheless selling it at the same time.