Product placement's long history

Who knew that product placement had such a long history? Stuart Elliot's New York Times column, Advertising, reports that Turner Classic Movies is doing a product placement series, based on research done by Jay Newell, an asst. prof. at Iowa State. On the trail of products spied in movies, Newell tracked down "a trove of evidence of product-placement agreements" in the 1930s. The earliest dated back to 1896.

Stuart Elliot, "Advertising" [column], New York Times, 2/28/05, C8.