10 Fictional Brands Hollywood Loves To Use In Movies & TV

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We’ve all had that moment where a character on TV or in a movie picks up a generically branded beer, or pulls out a package of cigarettes emblazoned with a logo that looks nothing like anything offered in the real world.

If a movie or TV show doesn’t want to feature a real brand, there are some options: come up with your own brands that you can sprinkle through franchises like bread crumbs for your viewers, a la Quentin Tarantino’s Red Apple cigarettes, or hire a prop house to do the job for you.

“We’re trained to see brands, so when you don’t it’s almost jarring,” Michael Bertolina of Independent Studio Services, a major Hollywood prop house, told FastCo in 2012. “But the network won’t use a brand if it interferes with an advertising deal they have or if it’s not used for its intended use. So instead of covering it with tape or running into a legal nightmare, we create these brands that are fictional.”

As a result, the keenest observers will see some of these fictional brands pop up in more than one place. That brings us to this list – which is by no means exhaustive, so if you’ve noticed one of these products elsewhere in the entertainment world, let us know at tips@consumerist.com.

1. Oceanic Airlines/Oceanic Airways

There’s one very good reason no one wants to use a real airline in movies and TV — because Hollywood just loves plane crashes, and no carrier wants their name associated with such destruction, real or not. Oceanic sounds real enough, and it’s been used many times on both the small and large screens.
As seen on TV: Lost, Alias, Castle, Chuck, Crossing Jordan, Flash Forward, Flipper, Fringe, Futurama, Once Upon a Time, Pushing Daisies, White Collar, The X-Files
On the silver screen: Executive Decision, For Love of the Game, Survivor

2. Heisler Gold Ale/Heisler Beer

There are a few fake beer brands out there, but Heisler has got to be one of the most prolific. Chances are if you’ve watched any primetime TV in the last 20 years, you’ve seen it.
As seen on TV: Everybody Hates Chris, Dollhouse, New Girl, Bones, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Burn Notice, Criminal Minds, Fear the Walking Dead, Two and a Half Men, CSI: Miami, My Name Is Earl, Heroes, Weeds, White Collar, Pretty Little Liars, Prison Break, Star Trek: Enterprise, Happy Endings, How I Met Your Mother, Parks and Recreation, Gilmore Girls, Hart of Dixie, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Awkward, United States of Tara, Malcolm in the Middle, The League, Raising Hope
On the silver screen: Superbad, The Social Network, Training Day, Ghost World, Mad Love, The Rainmaker, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, Beerfest

3. Let’s Potato Chips

If you blur your eyes juuuust a little bit, Let’s could look like Lay’s. Right? Sure. Regardless, everyone on TV is eating these chips.
As seen on TV: 2 Broke Girls, Arrested Development, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Community, Cougar Town, Dollhouse, Everybody Hates Chris, Everybody Loves Raymond, Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Middle, The Mindy Project, Miss Guided, My Name is Earl, The New Adventures of Old Christine, New Girl, Jane the Virgin, Orange Is The New Black, Sons of Anarchy, Switched at Birth, Trophy Wife, Ugly Betty, The Vampire Diaries, iCarly, Drake and Josh, White Collar

4. Gannon Car Rentals

Because even fictional characters need a set of wheels sometimes. Whether or not these rentals come with hidden fees, well, we can just assume.
As seen on TV: Heroes, Lost, Nip/Tuck, Glee

5. Finder-Spyder Search Engine

Although we may live in a world of Google and Bing, out there in the fictional landscape there’s another search engine that seems to dominate.
As seen on TV: Bones, Breaking Bad, Criminal Minds, Crossing Jordan, CSI, Dexter, General Hospital, Homeland, Prison Break, Weeds, Without a Trace, The X-Files

6. Mooby’s Golden Cow

This fast food chain is a common sight in the View Askewniverse created by Kevin Smith, feeding folks like Jay and Silent Bob.
On the silver screen: Clerks II, Dogma (remember when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon unleash their unholy fallen angel rage on a room full of fast food kingpins accused of worshiping a golden cow?), Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

7. Acme Corporation

This one is slightly different, because it’s not actually, technically, a fictional brand: there have been products branded Acme in the past. According to a Warner Brothers animator, the Acme name was inspired by businesses who wanted to be listed before their competitors in the Yellow Pages, so they’d name their businesses “Acme” or “Ace.” So the company started using it, especially in cartoons featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

“Whenever we played a game where we had a grocery store or something we called it the ACME corporation,” Chuck Jones said in a 2009 documentary. “Why? Because in the yellow pages if you looked, say, under drugstores, you’d find the first one would be Acme Drugs. Why? Because “AC” was about as high as you could go; it means the best; the superlative.”

Of course, there are a number of real-life companies using the Acme name. The brand was particularly confusing to young kids growing up in the Philadelphia area, where Acme supermarkets have been around for longer than any of the shows or movies using the fake brand, but where you could not readily purchase anvils or safes.
As seen on TV: Looney Tunes, Bullwinkle, The Simpson, I Love Lucy, Carmen Sandiego, The Andy Griffith Show
On the silver screen: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Last Action Hero
Elsewhere: Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side cartoons

8. Pizza Planet

This one’s a Pixar specialty, as the 1978 Gyoza Mark VII Lite Hauler pickup truck that’s used to make deliveries for Pizza Planet shows up in a every Pixar film to date — except The Incredibles.
On the silver screen: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, A Bug’s Life, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Cars, Cars 2, Ratatouille, Up, Monsters, Inc., Monsters University

9. Red Apple Cigarettes

This fictional brand of cigarettes is favored by Quentin Tarantino, you could say, as it’s appeared in a whole bunch of his movies.
On the silver screen: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill volumes 1-2, and Grindhouse. The brand even makes an appearance outside the Tarantino-verse in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, though there is still a connection to Tarantino here: At the time, Romy and Michele star Mira Sorvino was dating Quentin.

10. Morley Cigarettes

It’s not Marlboro, it’s Morley! This one is the Heisler of the tobacco world, appearing in a slew of TV shows and movies.
As seen on TV: 24, Friends, American Horror Story, Beverly Hills, 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, The X-Files, Criminal Minds, Breaking Bad, Burn Notice, Californication, Cold Case, CSI: NY, The Dick Van Dyke Show, ER, Everybody Hates Chris, Frasier, Jake 2.0, Judging Amy, Justified, The L Word, the Middle, Malcolm in the Middle, Nash Bridges, Prison Break, Pushing Daisies, Saving Grace, Shameless, Seinfeld, That ‘70s Show, The Twilight Zone, The Walking Dead, Weeds, The X-Files
On the silver screen: 200 Cigarettes, Platoon, Prozac Nation, Definitely, Maybe, Freddy Got Fingered, Mission: Impossible, Murder in the First, Psycho

(H/T to the Fictional Companies Wikia, Pixar Wikia)

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist