Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Ugly Truth

My partner and I went to see the movie 'The Ugly Truth' the other night. I see a ton of movies and I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to big studio romantic comedies. I thought this one was pretty good, if a little predictable. But there was something in it that I just have to take a moment to bitch about. For those of you who haven't seen this movie and want to, you'll probably want to stop reading now. I'm about to spoil a scene a bit.

In the Ugly Truth, there is a scene where Abby (Katherine Heigl) is gifted with some vibrating panties. It's made very clear that this is the Dr. Laura Berman Astrea Remote Control Panty. There is a close up of the box and the name and Katherine Heigl even says the name. So fine, Dr. Laura Berman managed to get herself another high-profile product placement. But here's my beef, if you're going to go out of your way to put that toy in a movie so everyone knows what it is, you should at least use the actual toy in the movie and not misrepresent what it is.

We know what the joke is going to be practically before she even opens the gift. Somehow she's going to end up wearing the panties in an inappropriate situation and someone is going to get a hold of the remote. Of course the remote does get away from her into the hands of a young boy who's busily trying to figure out what it is. He's interested in it because it's big and has all kinds of lights on it with names like 'ecstasy' written next to them. I've never ever seen a toy that has that kind of remote so I checked it out, and sure enough, the Astrea remote looks nothing like that. It's small and black and looks like a garage door opener and it has ONE SPEED!

The Astrea was obviously chosen because they are actually very pretty lacy panties - we could totally see Katherine Heigl wearing these (and some of us would like to). But to make the joke work, it needs to have the different settings on it and 'ecstasy' written across it. Yes, I understand that it's just a silly joke but what cheeses me is that the name of the toy is so obvious because clearly Laura Berman and California Exotics want people to rush to buy the toy that was in 'The Ugly Truth.' She even has it written all over her website that the toy was in 'The Ugly Truth'. But when people buy the toy and get it home, they'll realize that it's just a big plastic bullet with a boring one-speed remote. What also bugs me is that people will come to me, because I sell toys, looking for that 'Ugly Truth' toy and I have to explain that we don't have it because it's nothing like the one in the movie and it's just not really worth the price of it. But why would anyone believe me when I say that, when they say the toy right there on the screen?

There is a Berman toy that does all of those speeds and functions but it doesn't come with the fancy panties that are necessary for the joke. And the batteries only lasts for 15 minutes - which also doesn't work for the joke. But I'm sure they could change that too.

Why not just use a fake toy? Years ago, the movie 'Not Another Teen Movie' that used a fake toy because they needed a huge toy that rotated and pulsated and squirmed and basically looked like Barney on crack. But then again........ people still ask me where they can get that toy.