Seinfeld - Consumer Products

Consumer Products

A recurring feature of Seinfeld was its use of specific products, especially candy, as plot points. These might be a central feature of a plot (e.g. Junior Mints, Twix, Jujyfruits, bite size Three Musketeers, Snickers, Nestlé Chunky, Oh Henry! and PEZ), or an association of a candy with a guest character (e.g. Oh Henry! bars), or simply a conversational aside (e.g. Chuckles, Clark Bar, Twinkies).

Non-candy products featured in Seinfeld include Rold Gold pretzels (whose advertisements at the time featured Jason Alexander), Kenny Rogers Roasters (a chicken restaurant chain), Oreo Cookies, Triscuits, Ben & Jerry's, H&H Bagels, Baskin-Robbins, Dockers, Drake's Coffee Cakes, Ring Dings, Pepsi, Mello Yello, Snapple, Clearly Canadian, Bosco Chocolate Syrup, Kix (cereal), Cadillac, Saab, Ford Escort, Tyler Chicken (a parody of Tyson Chicken), Specialized Bicycles, Nike, BMW, Volvo, Toyota, Tupperware, Calvin Klein, Klein Bicycles, Ovaltine, Yoo-hoo, Arby's, TV Guide, Trump Tower, Glide Floss, Gore-Tex, Entenmann's, J. Peterman clothing catalog, and the board games Risk, Boggle, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, and Battleship.

The computers shown in Jerry's apartment are Apple Macintosh and several different models were shown, although Jerry is only seen using his computer once during the entire show. Also seen throughout the show's run were many different brands of cereal, e.g. Cheerios. Notable exceptions to this pattern are a fictional Scotch brand called "Hennigan's" (a portmanteau of "Hennessy" and "Brannigans") and a canned meat product called "Beef-a-reeno" (a parody of "Beef-a-roni"). Product placement, for Snapple, was inserted as a parody of product placement; when offered some by Elaine in the middle of a conversation, the character Babu Bhatt's (owner of a Pakistani restaurant named "Dream Cafe") brother declines, calling the drink "too fruity". A second time this product was mentioned is when Marla "the Virgin" is offered a Snapple by Elaine.

The show's creators claim that they were not engaging in a product placement strategy for commercial gain. One of the motivations for the use of real-world products, quite unrelated to commercial considerations, is the comedy value of funny-sounding phrases and words. "I knew I wanted Kramer to think of watching the operation like going to see a movie", explained Seinfeld writer/producer Andy Robin in an interview published in the Hollywood Reporter. "At first, I thought maybe a piece of popcorn falls into the patient. I ran that by my brother, and he said, 'No, Junior Mints are just funnier.'"

Many advertisers capitalized on the popularity of Seinfeld. American Express created a webisode in which Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman (voiced by Patrick Warburton, who played the role of David Puddy) starred in its commercial. The makers of the Today Sponge created the "Spongeworthy" game, on their website, inspired by the episode "The Sponge". Another advertisement featured Jason Alexander in a Chrysler commercial. In this, Alexander behaves much like his character George, and his relationship with Lee Iacocca plays on his George's relationship with Steinbrenner. Similarly, Michael Richards was the focus of a series of advertisements for Vodafone which ran in Australia where he dressed and behaved exactly like Kramer, including the trademark bumbling pratfalls.