Brands That Only Exist On-Screen
Movie directors love to create fictional brands that only exist in their own cinematic universes, like Quentin Tarantino’s Red Apple cigarettes, Kevin Smith’s Chewlies gum or Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones. It adds a touch of realism while avoiding thorny licensing agreements. But a few fictional brands can be claimed by no master, because they keep getting used over and over in movies and TV shows of all stripes. Such as…
Heisler Beer
On the small screen, drinking tends to be little more than a catalyst for outrageous shenanigans, and real beer brands don’t like to be associated with that kind of nonsense. That’s why, if you see someone on TV drinking a beer that has a label, odds are it’s Heisler. It’s a brand created by the graphics team at one of Hollywood’s leading prop houses, and although it’s actually just one of dozens of beer logos they offer, it’s the most popular because its retro design makes it feel like something the New Girl or Stranger Things crews would really drink. They also provide TV and movie sets with Morley cigarettes, the brand of choice for characters too evil even for tobacco companies.
Oceanic Airlines
For similar reasons, no real airline wants viewers to hear about one of their planes crashing or getting hijacked, even in a fictional story, hence the invention of Oceanic Airlines. It’s most famous as the owner of the plane that crashed the residents onto the island in Lost, but it’s appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows.
Finder Spyder
To be fair, Finder Spyder isn’t just one company, or it’s at least one that goes through constant rebranding, with different logos and even slightly different names (Spyder Finder, Finder-Spyder, etc.). It’s the search engine preferred by movie and TV characters, since Google requires an arduous application process for depiction on screen, including a long list of demands about its appearance. Sure, they could just use Bing, but come on. They want it to be realistic.
Let’s Potato Chips
Sometimes, it just comes down to avoiding conflict with advertisers. You can’t show your sitcom heroine eating Pringles and then cut to an ad for Lay’s, so in the early aughts, the same studio that makes Heisler was asked to produce a brand of potato chips. It’s been a favorite nibble of TV characters ever since, appearing on so many series that viewers developed a shared universe theory based on salty snacks.
Acme
You probably think of Acme as an exclusively Looney Tunes phenomenon, but it actually made its debut in a 1920 Buster Keaton film. As the O.G. fake brand, it was sort of an inside joke making fun of real-world advertisements that used “Acme,” which comes from the Greek for “peak,” the same way modern ones use “the leading brand,” although tons of real-world businesses also claimed the name so they would be listed first in the phone book. Since its silent introduction, it’s appeared in properties as diverse as classic TV shows like I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show, Three Stooges shorts, and of course, Warner Bros. cartoons. In fact, it’s so omnipresent that it was probably responsible for the suppression of the shelved Warner Bros. feature, Coyote vs. Acme. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
