We were talking here recently about product placement in TV shows and movies. This got me to thinking about the first time I was ever conscious of this in a program I watched. Kids' shows of the fifties and sixties were filled with commercials that merged almost seamlessly with content but there were the more blatant crossings of that imaginary dividing line. One occurred a couple times on Quick Draw McGraw. Quick Draw occasionally employed the services of a bloodhound named Snuffles who had a "thing" for dog biscuits. Give him one and he'd hug himself in delight, then literally float up in the air and down to earth, breathing a sigh of ecstatic fulfillment.
And what kind of dog biscuits evoked this reaction from Quick Draw's pooch? Why, Gro-Pup T-Bone Dog Biscuits, of course. Above, you see Snuffles holding a box of them in a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon — and this is not a commercial. This is a frame-grab from a cartoon. Anyone here think it was probably just a coincidence that Gro-Pups were manufactured by the Kellogg's cereal people, and Kellogg's was the sponsor of Quick Draw McGraw? Didn't think so. In fact, in at least one cartoon, the box wasn't a hand-drawn abstract like the above but an actual, pasted-in photo of the real Gro-Pup box. This was shortly before Augie Doggie, another character on the Quick Draw show, began turning up on the Gro-Pup boxes in stores.
I actually noticed this shameless bit of payola when I saw the show at age eight. It did not make me want to run out and buy that brand of dog biscuits, possibly because we didn't have a dog. But I did think it was cheating and I still do.