10 Most Embarrassing Product Placements In Wrestling History
WWE fans were horrified, but Vince McMahon shouted: "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"
Obvious statement alert: WWE and other major pro wrestling promotions are in business to make money, but fans generally prefer when that dough comes from a hot merch item that catches fire or because there's a killer match people trip over themselves to see.
Why bother with all that storytelling or character development sh*t when companies outside the wrasslin' bubble will pay healthy wads of cash?! Vince McMahon became the kingpin of cross-promoting other products in exchange for a financial boost years ago - sometimes though, that has come at the expense of his own.
There's a difference between having Snickers sponsor WrestleMania and booking zombies to devour workers just to promote some Netflix movie, put it that way.
The moments featured here caused eye-rolling responses from live crowds who wondered why they were expected to pretend that dudes dressing up as fast food mascots was laugh-out-loud entertainment. Other times, product placements dominated entire pay-per-views or became the only thing folks associate with them (and not in a good way).
Such tie-ins might've looked good on balance sheets, but they were outright disasters in execution.
10. RoboCop Helps Sting
Taking the p*ss out of this will never get old.
WCW was desperate to look cool and munch into the WWF's market share in 1990. So, then-boss Jim Herd inked a deal to bring RoboCop to pay-per-view at Capital Combat in May of that year. His role? RC would help Sting fend off the Four Horsemen to ripping a cage to pieces as the announcers marvelled in the background.
This was promotion for the RoboCop 2 movie, nothing else. It's probably best-known for Jim Ross going into hype overdrive on comms, and for fleeting thoughts that WCW might actually try to put the character in a match soon thereafter. They didn't, but RoboCop would've been a smoother worker than El Gigante.
At first glance, Herd was right to give this a bash. However, it didn't quite get the reaction from fans that WCW higher-ups had hoped, so the experiment was a bit of a flop. Meh, Ric Flair probs could've carried the thing to a decent match.