Your promise not to advertise your website was in fact a product placement :) I’m pretty clever for noticing

When I think of film analysis I really do think Rob Ager.

I love the scene where Jules drinks Brett's Sprite entirely while staring at him. He's establishing his dominance and also subtly hinting that Brett won't be surviving this encounter.

Hard to believe this movie is now 25 years old. I like older Tarantino. Seemingly mundane and meaningless dialogue that is sharply written, making it entertaining and immersive. It makes the characters and the world seem like they exist.

When the Wolf gives a head nod over the coffee... CLASSIC.

I love that tarantino makes appearences in his movies that arent the star role it just feels like hes having a lot of fun with them especially the pulp fiction role

I always thought the burger used was closer to the “In N Out” cheeseburger (southern California staple). The Quarter Pounder has sesame seed bun. The vanilla cola Vincent orders started my unhealthy obsession with that drink throughout the ‘90’s.

The best film informative analyst on KZfaq

18:51 "Everyone knows that wiping your ass on a puppy is much more pleasant" perfect quote

You can mention collective learning as much as you want and I wouldn’t complain.they are your videos and I really appreciate what you do

actually the whole Fast food mentions could be a reference to the pulp genre itself. How even McDonalds, even though cheap and inexpensive, can still produce a tasty result, and when viewed at the right angle can mean something more.

the problem i have is that mcdonald's is a coke loyalist. they must not have known pepsico had a deal as well....also, sprite (mentioned during the big kahuna scene) is a coca-cola brand.

@12:10 I flirted with smoking tobacco off and on years ago. Once I went into a tobacco market and tried to buy "those apple flavored cigarettes" and the guy said they didn't have any. I swore up and down that I had bought some from that particular store! I didn't quite argue with him but I knew I was right. It was several years later while watching PF for the umpteenth time and realized that I had that scene subliminally knocking around my brain. That's a testament to how powerful product placement is. Even a fake product.

John Travolta loves _’Five Guys’_ And he’s also fond of burgers…

I absolutely love your film analysis. No matter the movie, no matter the subject... the depths at which you dig to unearth hidden meaning is truly impressive. Thank you for your dedication.

I think the reason we don't see labels is because they didn't have a lot of money to show those brands in the film. After Quentin did reservoir dogs he went to Europe to write Pulp Fiction. I believe that's why the characters talk about different cultures like with the metric system

My favorite product placement of all time has to be _Applebees_ in _Talladega_ _Nights._

I’ve been following you for absolute years maybe even going on 10 years!!!! My mums from Liverpool too! You are sooo talented and your analysis of these cult classics leaves me in awe. Absolute legend! I find this subject matter completely intriguing and compelling, fascinating and very deep. Thank you 🙏 for taking the mystery out of the movie industry manipulation and subliminal mind matrix that Hollywood is. 💓

When I went to West Germany for my grandfather's funeral in October 1984, I remember seeing beer on the McDonalds menu when we went there. Neat stuff.

A Band Apart is a reference to one of Tarantino’s favourite films, Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders, which in Its original French is called A Band Apart.

I think the main idea with all the products is to create a feeling of familiarity to connect with the audience like this is a real place and we have things in common with the characters. This is a frequent theme in Tarantino's movies

Even the red background and yellow font used for the Pulp Fiction poster suggests McDonalds.

27:53 i never noticed that wart on christopher walken's finger before..and jules called that guy flock of seagulls because of his hairstyle....lol

The fact that Jules drinks the entire Sprite is very telling. He is letting Brett know that he won't be needing it, because he is going to be dead in a few minutes. (Notice Brett's facial expression at 10:42. He knows what time it is.)

You think maybe the Big Kahuna abbreviation being "BK" could be a dig at product placement considering the character calling a BK burger tasty?

That Red Chevrolet Car was Tarantino's. Someone stole it after watching the movie and Tarantino found it many years later.

"Red Apple cigarettes" was once again used as a product placement in the recent Tarantino movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

Denny's: We're not advertising in your movie, it's to violent Mcdonald's: LEEETTT MEE IIINNN

A Band Apart is also a reference to Godard's film Band of Outsiders. The dinner conversation between Mia and Vincent is based on a scene from Vivre sa Vie.

I'm a simple man. I see a Collative Learning Pulp Fiction video, I thumbs up.

Red Apple cigs and Big Laguna burgers are part of the Tarintino Universe . His movies are connected by people , places and things from his mind .

I genuinely would be shocked to find any of this was conscious and willful Product Placement approved by the corporate. Just imagine the backlash if the moms of America found out that Pepsi paid or consented to having their product compared to Heroin? I think what is more likely is that the brands are used in a "short hand" manner by Tarrantino. Similarly to how he uses inspiration from other films and lifts aesthetics, tropes and even music to bring back certain associations or put forth certain ideals, he is doing the same with these Brands. While watching your video, I was reminded that both Mcdonalds and Coke are the top dog in their respective category. It shows the type of character that Vincent is. He is enthused and patronizes a Mcdonalds even in a foreign country, but in contrast is entirely dismissive of Burger King. He is the quintessential American being in QT's mind. His feelings towards the brands tells you so much with so little. Similarly with the drug dealer he's being courted to switch from Coke, the other mainstay brand in American culture for the edgier and scrappier Pepsi. He listens to the pitch against his better judgment, gives it a try and his lack of brand loyalty, his straying from his essential self comes back to bite him in the ass. In contrast Marvin and crew are eating "Big Kahuna" burgers, a non existent brand carrying NO WEIGHT in our minds. Because that is who they are in the context of who Jules and Vincent are. They are a blank slate, replace "big kahuna" with what ever the name of your local mom and pop burger shop and the effect will be the same. Their nerves highlight their weak position and lack of experience and status. Jules in contrast gleefully retells the stories of Mcdonalds "Royale" status which extends to both him and Vincent because they patronize that establishment. Jules even pitches a few other branded options of burgers, as niche as Jack in the Box but they are not even up to that level. He takes control of the situation and in essence makes them give him permission to eat their meal, which alone has a lot of implications. They know they cannot refuse his request because he holds the power. When it comes to the drink, again Sprite isn't as close to being as iconic as Coke or Pepsi. There is less cultural and sentimental attachment to sprite than there ever would be to coke or Pepsi. What would it say to us the viewer if both Vincent and Brett drank coke, or both ate "Royale's" with cheese? It would be a unifier of status and power that in the context of the movie just wouldn't work.

Your LAVA promo was gold!

Apple=Forbidden fruit: worm=Serpent .. Bible memes

Wow, Rob! This is really one of my favourite videos on youtube! Sure in the top 10! Your work is AWESOME! Interesting, entertaining, funny and enlightening! 👍👍👍👍

I honestly don’t care that you plug your website and products whenever you want to plug them it’s your channel and that’s how you gotta support the good videos you put out! Keep up the good work honestly if people have enough of a problem with you plugging your products then there’s a fast forward option

“Everyone knows that wiping your arse on a puppy is much more pleasant”. Best one liner ever!

Product Placement. At That Time, watching on a VCR, 2 people watching went out and bought heroin upon seeing the needle in vein scene. My reprobate friends..

Hey man Happy New Year!!! Love these videos and appreciate all the content over the years.

Thanks for the analysis, Rob. I did my undergrad thesis in Tarentino, so I really enjoyed this. My mother is a playwright/screenwriter from NY, a few years younger than Quentin. She really enjoyed this too, and offered up a few observations from the time. Back when the film came out, she had a diving buddy from London who was absolutely crushed to find out that there was no Jack Rabbit Slim's. All of the Disney-like theme restaurants were popping up all over, so it fit the mold so perfectly. Back then, five dollars would have been a very expressive shake; ironically, now Wawa's has a shake that is exactly five dollars, and it is truly amazing, especially vanilla - Martin and Lewis. It makes "Rumble" play in your head upon the first sip. My mother also did a lot of her early writing at Denny's(open all night, very large, comfortable booths, and thy didn't care if you stayed all night), about the same time, and after considering who served what here, she's not sure about Coke and Pepsi. All of the restaurants mentioned serve Coca Cola products exclusively. The phrase "Pepsi Challenge" was tossed around a lot; that was probably incidental to the dialogue. Sprite ( a Coca Cola product) has always been heavily marketed in a very racist manner to African Americans. LeBron James is their biggest spokesperson. It's the mixer used in lean,not even trying to be subtle in implying that African Americans are all obsessed with basketball and vile mixtures of opiods and Jolly Ranchers. How American. The snippet from the hallway, "Strawberry Letter 23", was the music behind Ordell's murder if Beaumont in "Jackie Brown", which I know is not your to thing but the song was a huge hit when my parents were little. Part of my attraction to Tarantino is the association with the music; it's always a big joyous sing a long for me. Another interesting factoid; the bar Ordell exits after the money exchange is the same strip club that Conrad Murray was right before he went to give Michael Jackson his last "milk". Just interesting. Thanks for the video. I just discovered you; haven't had time to comment. You've been very helpful, and your site with definitely get business from me in my grad work. Thanks again!

Big Kahuna is also a very good film with Kevin Spacy who was also in Swimming with Sharks with the guy Jules is interrogating in Pulp Fiction.

Thanks for posting this! I really enjoy looking into product placement, like Ghostbusters' use of the Stay Puff marshmallows throughout the film.

It's great to see this back on KZfaq again after such a long time

your videos are always well thought out and clever. i love this analysis.

Thanks for your content Rob. Longtime listener, (7 years ?), recent buyer of your content. Worth every penny.

I saw this movie when I was stationed in Germany. We had a Burger King on post and a German McDonald's up the street outside of post. I went to Burger King more often. But this scene always makes me chuckle

I REALLY want a hamburger now.

My interpretation of the Red Apple cigarette packet is the worm is a representation of the snake from the garden of Eden coming out of the apple of the garden to entice Eve to smoke instead of eating the healthy apple therefore also enticing the buyer of the smokes to choose cigarettes instead of being healthy. He is smiling so he is clearly enjoying them. A side note I noticed which could be my imagination going wild is the shine on the left of the apple appears to be a reflection of possibly a window with a cross in the middle. Which could lend validation to my theory.

I never noticed in the Butch cab scene the cab is filmed in color, but the b roll of the world outside is B&W (15:12).

thankyou for your work rob

Not sure how I found your channel but glad I did.

Love your videos man. Keep it up

The main thing I notice watching these clips is how much better film looks than digital.

Hey Rob, don't know if you caught this and found it too much of a stretch, but the heroin dealer wearing the speed racer shirt perfectly mirrors Pepsi's red white and blue color scheme with Speed Racers white helmet, red ascot, and blue uniform. Seems to add a little more credence to that scene being a peps plug.

Awesome analysis, you really touched on a lot of intersting stuff. But I think you might be missing a piece here when looking into Pulp Fiction's food aesthetic. In Southern California there's a mish-mash of corporate chain crap (like fast food) and small retail shops, that are often specific to a city or county. When I first watched some guys in a crappy apartment eating a local burger chain for breakfast, my first thought was "Yes! This is what it's like here, I've done this!" I feel the Big Kahuna is a nod to the maybe hundreds of small food joints that serve burgers and fries all over SoCal. The fact that these guys picked a local joint over one of the big national chains is important (in the same way he uses Hawthorn Grill) to establish a very SoCal vibe of knowing where the "real" or authentic restaurants are, maybe even so non-corporate that the name of the city is in the name of the diner. I love that kind of specificity of restaurants - it's just a thing that people here in SoCal do. I mean, I can tell you the best place to get carne asada fries, the best "Greek" place to get a pastrami sandwich, Orange County has multiple places for awesome vietnamese Pho. Basically, I'm saying that Tarantino was trying to capture the specific SoCal understanding about fast food joints, and how the local spots are "cooler" (and to us natives, tastier and more interesting) than the corporate places. He did a similar thing in True Romance - it's just an ode to SoCal taste, and maybe snobbery too.

Nice work Rob I've always wondered about this issue in Tarantino...you nailed it

I also remember Seinfeld messing around with product placement. For instance, several times (over multiple episodes) Jerry offers someone a Snapple. But everyone refuses the offer specifically saying why exactly they don't like it.

I just got a cup of coffee watching this. I don't know.. suddenly I was craving for it

This is a tasty video.

I was pretty sure that I can't be convinced going in, but you did it again.

Uma Thurman is smoking hot in this .

Hi Rob ─ at 31:35 you talk about cell phones "which people didn't have until the late 80s" ...I always thought the movie was contemporary (1994). Which year do you assume it takes place? And if they mention in it the movie I have missed it, even though I've seen it maybe fifty times. Thanks in advance.

9:15 save your money. that is definitely not a mcdonalds quarter pounder. that bun is wrong, the patty is too small and the fries are way too thick cut. that has a white castle look to it. and a big mac is a double burger with a bun between the patties. although, the poster art is in mcdonald's red and yellow.

I always felt that Vincent’s dismissal of Burger King was him being annoyed and letting Jules know he was done playing the “what’s this called” game.

Very interesting video! Haven't seen product placement that way before. How come you didn't mention Mr. Wolf's Acura? The (arguably) best car in the movie being a Japanese one.

Greetings from Liverpool 15 Rob fella. Nice article. I think quentin knew exactly what he was doin and used his craft to merge branding into fiction , then bk out the other side. Masterful

I never thought about this!

The way I always interpreted it as you mention that the dialog makes us get us get connected to the charaters the movie. Because people in the real world use reference to products and commercials all the time in day to day conversation, often unconciously, because commercial lines can get stuck in common consiousnes. So referring to some real brands in the real world just makes us accept the world more. And as non LA person who knows there could be a big kahuna burger joint just around the corner from there.

Best product placement of all time was a snapple ad in 30 Rock. It was overtly phony and ended with a fourth wall break where Tina Fey asks, "can we have our money now?" It has been copied since then, but it is brilliant.

Ohhh pulp fiction! Thanks Rob

You can clearly see Eric Stoltz eating Fruit Brute cereal. This was a cereal from the seventies that was discontinued in 1982, which makes no sense with cell phones & Flock of Seagull references but it does make it feel like the seventies. Or he's had that cereal for over a decade & is just now getting around to eating it. That's some stale ass cereal. But I bet the marshmellows still taste good. I was always a Boo Berry man, myself.

Regarding your line of questioning @ 20:36, I started dipping my french fires in mayo specifically after seeing Pulp Fiction when it came out and still do until this very day. Something clicked, mayo goes great on burgers too!

I never understood how she was so excited to eat that burger immediately after doing some coke.

27:57 the chevy logo is a chevron shape, and in the window directly above the chevrolet name is two blue chevrons in the window reflection. this is seconds before she makes her 'square' shape in the air so shapes in the imagery are meant to be noticed i believe.

great vid rob

This is a compelling set of items you presented here, Rob. My feeling before watching this was that any brand references were meant to anchor the film as a post-modern work, kind of in a Warhol - Pop Art kind of way, but the way real and fake brands are presented is highly inconsistent. As you were, I would be curious to see if they have anything on the books for endorsement funding.

I was always fascinated by how QT played with time in this movie. There is the Wolf and his 'that's 10 minutes away, I'll be there in 8' line(or whatever the exact line is.) There is the fact he is attending a cocktail party at that hour of the morning and the fact the kids in the apartment are eating burgers for breakfast. That's deliberate, but why, I don't know! Incidentally, the cigarette brand Chesterfield is name checked by Harvey Keitel's Mr White in Reservoir Dogs.

The phrase 'tasty beverage' shows up in a few tarantino films....

I have a very simple philosophy on advertisement. If I see an ad from a company, I don't buy from that company. If a product is good, I'll figure it out myself. That's the thing about truly good things.... They're good on their own. They don't need to constantly tell you that it is good.

This really adds another level to Quinton's attention to detail

thank for your content as ever

Only Rob could make a 35 minute video on product placement interesting and engaging. 18:32 I think you’re really underestimating people’s obsession with serial killers, especially in America lol Also speaking of McDonald’s, their product placement in Coming To America was interesting, since they were portrayed as a competitor and thus the enemy, of a fake fast food chain restaurant with a similar name, “McDowell’s”

I don't know if it's been mentioned in the comments, but you forgot the blatant product placement of the Acura NSX. More so because it's related to the coolest character in the movie.

"I like the one that says 'some pulp' " - Tony Soprano

Thanks for a great video! Very illuminating and entertaining. A little extra bit of info regarding A Band Apart (Tarantino´s production company): the name is a wordplay on Godard´s 1964 film Bande á part. :)

Idk, it might maybe be because I'm kinda a psychopath, but the mock sales pitch for Lava soap TOTALLY works for me, I'm sold! However, it's not any praticular chemical in Lava that gets the blood off, but rather the abrasive, gritty texture that comes from the inclusion of pumice stone.

You make me think. Good job, I don't do it very often. I'm a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock and any McGuffin.

For some reason I feel certain that QT will see this video. You totally nailed this.

31:38 Quentin opens Reservoir Dogs with a conversation about Madonna's music. According to the conversation it may be that he "...used to like her early stuff, "Borderline", but when she got into that " Papa Don't Preach" phase I tuned out.". Another thing is that QT was a huge De Palma fan and his favorite movies are "Carrie" and "Blow Out" which is a huge reason why he wanted John Travolta. He remembered that JT was a great actor and not just from Look Who Talking.

Love the content

Consume Stay Asleep Obey

I actually assumed the Sprite placement was the prop department's way of justifying filling the soda cup with water.

It was the one film I can remember where I really wanted a smoke while I was watching it. I remember seeing it in the cinema in '94 and myself and my buddy Jamsie almost ran out of the cinema at the end of it to light up!!

A band a part is most importantly, the name of a Jean-luc Godard film from 1964 for which Tarantino has a lot of appreciation for

If McDonalds hamburgers *looked* half as good as that Big Kahuna burger eaten by Jules, I would’ve died from congestive heart failure 15 years ago 🍔

PF is set in the '90's, are the characters are people who are stuck a bit in the past, where everything was more simple and "real". 1994 was the start of the end for McD and BK, after this movie, what people did was seek out other no-name brands instead of the big names. EVERYONE remembers the fast food discussions in PF, 25 years later. QT made up all these fake brands because he didn't get a paid promotions for those brands and didn't want the hassle in the future of working out deals. "Could you roll me one, cowboy"--can you guess the brand name this would have been? This might have been a soft promotion. All appliances are GE, old-time, *real American brands* that last and last. Some of these are decades old in 1994, but still work. Most products that are real American is presented in a positive fashion. There is supposedly subliminal messages/imagery in some of the QT fake brand names. No, this is not a conspiracy, it was a common thing illustrators did back in the day. In Big Kahuna, there is supposedly a naked woman.

Rob, I don't know if it's the same in Europe, but in the US we sometimes use brand names as if they were the generic products. Some examples include tissue, jello, Jeep, and Coke. I bring this up because maxipad is another example. It could be that Tarantino put maxi pad in the script not even realizing that it's a brand name.

The interesting trivial point in Pulp Fiction is Jules' girlfriend. Jules mentions he has a girlfriend and she's a vegetarian, and that's all we know. However, as you learn more about him, you start to wonder about what sort of relationship he has with her, what sort of woman is she and how does this cold as ice hitman date a vegetarian even though obviously he like meat (but not pork).

As I recall, in reference to the popularity of "Pulp Fiction's" soundtrack, the movie "The Sting" repopularized the music of Scott Joplin, who had fallen from popularity until that movie. Since then, y'can't get enough of Scott Joplin.

hello rob, loved watching your video and would just like to mention that you missed a product placement mention. the movie poster at 29:40 has an image of a pistol in a prominent position.