Selling Out: A Brief, Highly Selective History of Product Placement at the Movies

Rhinestone (1984)
As part of a 1983 deal with Sylvester Stallone, products from cigarette manufacturer Brown & Williamson were supposed to appear in five of his future films. (Price tag: $500,000. One condition: Rocky Balboa wouldn't smoke 'em.) One of the films, the dismal comedy Rhinestone, co-starred Dolly Parton as a country-western singer who bets she can turn Stallone's character into a music star. The deal turned out to be a bad bet for Brown & Williamson, as the company admitted after an internal audit. Marlboro, which paid $42,000 for placements in the Superman series, presumably got better bang for their buck.

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