From the category archives:

FICTIONAL COMPANIES

Parallax Corporation

August 5, 2010

If you’re One of Those SPECIAL People with BRAINS not just education who is not LIVING UP to your POTENTIAL through No Fault of Your Own, you can CHANGE YOUR LUCK. Send in this ad and receive a FREE GIFT for taking this FREE test:

Mail answers to:
Parallex Corporation
Division of Human Engineering
603-08 Marshall Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
About [...]

Read the full article →

The Slander and Besmirchment of ACME Products Corporation

July 25, 2010

Someone on TopTenz.net recently posted a(nother) Top 10 Fictional Fictional Brands from Movies and TV list, which included Morleys, Big Kahuna Burger, and so on. At the end of the list was ACME, and here’s what the strident blogger had to say about this company:
There is no more culturally famous fake company than Acme, [...]

Read the full article →

Nails, Mooby’s, and Buddy Christ

July 6, 2010

An abundance of inside jokes and references weave together the movies that fall within Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse canon. Films like Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma drop allusions to unseen characters (like “Cousin Walter”, who met an undignified demise) or feature similar pop culture conversations (as in the inordinate amount of Burt Reynolds-centric [...]

Read the full article →

CINCO Roundup

July 2, 2010

Rich Shivener from Topless Robot beat me to the punch on this one, so rather than shamelessly steal his content, I’ll just shamefully link to it:
Read 8 Great CINCO Products from Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job

Read the full article →

Blammo! Marketing (or Not a Real Selling Point)

June 23, 2010

When Blammo! released Log in the United States, they launched an infectious ad campaign that quickly took the nation by storm. If you haven’t already seen this commercial, be warned: This song will not leave your brain for a long, long time.

The jingle for Log contains all of the product’s selling points:

Bigness
Heaviness
Woodenness
Goodness

Okay, so [...]

Read the full article →

Hidden Homages – Shaun of the Dead

June 14, 2010

The barrage of quick-cuts and frantic zooms that define Edgar Wright’s directorial style makes it difficult to focus on subtle details. That is, unless you’re a huge geek with enough patience to try to catch the half millisecond of focused tight shots in sequences like this one from Shaun of the Dead:

The entire film [...]

Read the full article →

Treasures from Zamunda

May 17, 2010

In the days before he was donning fat suits or voicing a cartoon ass, Eddie Murphy was actually in some pretty good stuff. One of the hits of the golden years is Coming to America, a movie about an African prince who travels to the city of Queens, NY in order to find – [...]

Read the full article →

Entreprenerdial Spirit

May 6, 2010

Bryan Ward, founder and CEO of creative ad agency Giant Ideas, does some pro-bono ad work for fictional corporations which he’s aggregated in the Flickr set Geek Ad Wednesday.
Some of my favorites:

“For those of you that might not be familiar with the movie or the book it was based on (Make Room! Make Room! by [...]

Read the full article →

A Message from Cyberdyne Systems

May 6, 2010

I was happy to see that one of the subjects of When Good Companies Choose EVIL Names took notice of my link to his real-life Cyberdyne Systems website. I was even more happy to find that he had a sense of humor about it.
Bill Witts, founder of Cyberdyne Systems, writes:
So, our plans for [...]

Read the full article →

The Slovin Shield

April 26, 2010

From the recent 30 Rock Episode: Lee Marvin vs Derek Jeter:
As part of Tracy Jordan’s compelling argument that old-school racism is back (ever since Barry Obams got into office) he points out:
Somethin’s goin on. You know what I seen last night? A Slovin Shield commercial… with a BLACK burglar!

Read the full article →

More Nice Robots with KILLER Names

April 12, 2010

In a previous post, When Good Companies Choose EVIL Names, I provided two examples of real companies named after the apocalypse-igniting tech company Cyberdyne from the Terminator films.  Not sure how, but I completely missed this one:

Real: Cybernetics company headquartered in Japan.
[ www.cyberdyne.jp/english/ ]
The only thing this Cyberdyne has in common with the Cyberdyne of [...]

Read the full article →