While a few people I spoke with were bothered by the advertising in the movie, it didn't bother me. The products were handled well and they made sense in context.

The truck the man in the yellow hat drove was designed to fit the look of the movie and was based on a Volkswagen Touareg concept vehicle. The lead character is a monkey, so having bananas with stickers on them that say Dole fit perfectly. That kind of promotion only helps a movie. Without ticket buyers, we don't have jobs.

Another reminder that the products were well integrated into Curous George occurred when I spoke with the film's director, Matt O'Callaghan, and he could only remember the Volkswagen placement.

Disney's 1988 animated feature Oliver and Company had a number of advertised products like Coca-Cola, USA Today, Sony and Ryder Truck Rental.

Threshold's never-released animation Foodfight! tried taking product placement to an extreme. The movie takes place in a supermarket at night and when all the people are gone the aisles turn into virtual city streets. The products and product icons come to life and all the products and icons are real.

Of course, the record of product placement goes to the 2010 Oscar animated shorts winner Logorama. It featured more than 3,000 logos and icons, although they were non-official, so it wasn't really product placement, just products used.

Even Pixar showed Apple products in its hit feature WALL•E (although, aren't they all hits?): the eponymous robot watches Hello, Dolly! on an iPod. The Mac OS X Leopard wallpaper was seen in the background. Even when WALL•E finishes recharging his batteries, he makes the Mac welcome chime.

While not exactly product placement, the floating robot Eve was partially designed by an Apple designer. Richard Siklos at Fortune Magazine wrote that WALL•E director Andrew Stanton called Steve Jobs, who then sent Apple design guru Johnny Ive to Pixar to consult on the design. No wonder the character is as sleek as an iPod.

According to one fan, the hit anime movie Cowboy Bebop featured Coca-Cola.

In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, co-starring live-action star Brendan Fraser, there is a humorous bit of product integration where the actors see a Walmart in the desert and Bugs Bunny asks, "Is that a mirage or just product placement?" Daffy Duck responds, "Hey, who cares, with shopping convenience and such low prices." Bugs continues, "It sure was nice of Walmart to give us these complimentary Walmart fountain drinks for mentioning Walmart so much." The producers made the humor of the product integration part of the humor of the movie, thus it fit into the movie rather than pulling the viewer out of the magic of the moment.