The industry sources that are wheeled out to defend the practice of product placement claim, predictably, that the onslaught of logos in Herbie: Fully Loaded is simply about realism. This is, in general terms, a tired and altogether hollow claim, coming from people who are actually in the business of escapism. The excuse here is that the action in this film is embedded in the world of NASCAR and, as we all know, NASCAR itself often appears to be nothing more than the mobile progeny of Times Square, the Ginza, and Piccadilly Circus.

But wait: it is two of the writers on Herbie: Fully Loaded who make this claim for realism ("people who have problems with the [on-screen] 'Herbie' promotions don't understand Nascar") and it these same two writers (Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant) who "came up with the idea of setting the long-delayed 'Herbie' project in the Nascar milieu." So, who's fooling who? Might it be possible - even probable - that the project got the greenlight precisely because the writers found a 'realistic' way to turn it into a placement bonanza? Rest assured they worked hard for their money; as Lennon says: "There's so much product placement in the film that it's really hard to sneak it by."