A History of BAD Shrek Products

considering its impact it's hard to believe the last Shrek movie came out well over a decade ago somehow this iconic Saga of films has avoided becoming some estranged faded memory of the 2000s and actually managed to stay culturally relevant years later what kept it going was it the endless memes the spin-offs was it Al Pacino's phone case at a dinner party it was a gift it was a gift from my daughter whatever the reason it's clear that something about the franchise resonates with us on a deep cultural level so much so that the Library of Congress actually inducted the first Shrek film into the national film registry an honor reserved only for films that proved to have a quote historical cultural or aesthetic significance and in a lot of ways it was rightly earned Shrek was a clever satirical jab at the last 60 years of fairy tale style animation with a general appeal that managed to charm audiences young and old that's what ultimately made the movie an instant classic and unarguably a Smash Hit little did we know that DreamWorks would leverage this position with one of the most obnoxiously aggressive marketing campaigns of the last 50 years for over a decade DreamWorks would put Shrek on almost every product imaginable and one way or another we eventually all bought in by Shrek 3 it was practically a part of everyday life one day we all just rubbed our eyes and realized we were bathing with Shrek shampoo and eating green ketchup and it wasn't even our fault as part of their marketing efforts DreamWorks had made it their sole initiative to have a tie-in product with almost every major brand on the planet it was virtually unavoidable and depending on where you were in the world those product tie-ins could get very very weird so today we're taking a break from the deep Dives to look at some of the weirdest Shrek themed products that DreamWorks ever licensed some good some bad and some deadly for some reason and unsurprisingly many of those products were snacks primarily targeted towards children in a lot of ways the 2000s kind of felt like an Area 51 style testing grounds for children's food products you had a lot of Shameless use of artificial coloring 14 syllable ingredients dunkables dippables whatever this is and a whole lot of other offenses and it's not to say that these Foods aren't still prevalent today but we're talking about a time when a much larger portion of parents were less concerned with nutrition and more concerned with getting kids to just shut up and eat and this kind of ignorance gave companies a lot more room for experimentation now when it came to Shrek themed food products that was no exception [Music] [Applause] in 2000 Heinz took a look at a chart and realized that roughly half of ketchup consumers were children and since it takes a grown-up to realize that ketchup is a sea tier sauce at best [Music] they inevitably tried to find more ways to appeal to kids in their efforts Heinz pushed their r d Department to the Forefront of ketchup technology re-engineering their formula to produce an artificially colored ketchup in a myriad of different colors and it just so happened that a year later the first Shrek movie came out so Heinz performed the intellectual equivalent of banging two rocks together and marketed their green ketchup as Shrek ketchup Shrek up and for those of us old enough to remember Heinz colored ketchup was a total hit making quite a respectable six-year run from 2000 to 2006. unfortunately toward the end of the product's life cycle parents were starting to get a little suspicious about the product's ingredients and rightfully so turns out Heinz had chemically re-engineered their ketchup to the point where they legally could not call the product tomato ketchup maybe in hindsight releasing mystery color wasn't such a good idea [Music] scanners aren't so depressing when you're a kid which is probably why Kid Cuisine was so popular just by looking at the boxes Kid Cuisine appears to hold the record for having the highest amount of unidentifiable substances in its frozen meals which is a record no food product should ever have and apparently the Shrek themed dinners were no exception originally advertised for Shrek 2 these meals included shrek-shaped nuggets shrek-shaped mac and cheese and the ever Infamous swamp pudding which advertised the ability to turn your tongue green this marketing gimmick would go on to be mimicked by countless other products throughout the decade and in my opinion really exhausted Itself by the time we got to Shrek Cheetos later on in 2010 Kid Cuisine would bring back the tie-in to promote Shrek Forever After this time with a contest that's right if you were one of the lucky few to pull the coveted green tray from specially marked packages you were granted the chance to win a trip to Universal Studios to meet Shrek who at least for a time was still kind of a work in progress so what's Kid Cuisine up to today any new products exciting new Partnerships nope from one look at their website it barely looks like their menus changed in fact the company's never even made an effort to Branch out with their meal items or provide healthier alternatives but can we really expect much from a company that once advertised color changing dessert as an attractive selling point I don't think so for the entirety of the decade Shrek's main marketing Ploy was green colored Everything Green ketchup green tongues green popcorn green it had kind of gotten out of hand but when it came to this marketing tactic no other product curdles the tongue more than nesquik's limited edition swamp flavored syrup and no that's not a joke this Spanish label directly translates to swamp flavor but apparently the actual taste was more akin to sour apple from what I can tell this product was widely sold throughout South America and Europe but all I could really find were Eastern European commercials from 2004. so if you've ever wanted to hear a Hungarian voice actor literally moaning for swamp milk well look no further hmm [Music] as much as I want to hate this product I very well may be in the minority as it appears as though a petition has been created to actually bring this stuff back oh and they're like super close to reaching their goals so if any of you want to be the change you wish to see in the world I've gone ahead and linked the petition down below that's it [Music] Shrek Twinkies or shrinkies were a Hostess tie-in product that was released exclusively for Shrek 2 and Shrek Forever After boasting the same great Twinkie taste but with a Shrek colored cream filling this is just another product in a long line of Shrek themed foods that oddly appears to contain some sort of preserved Shrek Essence and it is a trend I am all too glad has come and gone and it seems I'm not alone in thinking this in a presentation to the United States Senate Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa also voices his distaste for Shrek Twinkies in what may be one of the funniest two minutes in American politics many as I said advertisements for junk food snacks use characters popular with children here's Shrek advertising Twinkies I kind of like Shrek and now using Shrek to poison our kids Twinkies green Twinkies with a green filling in them nutritional value zero Shrek now becomes a bad guy kids see shrekken they like Shrek they saw the movie Shrek has a powerful appeal to kids Minds foreign in order to promote Shrek 4 in 2010 McDonald's would offer Shrek shrek-themed drinking glasses for two dollars a piece alongside any order the glasses featured all the characters we knew and loved one for donkey Fiona Shrek and Puss in Boots and strangely enough this glass yes this specific glass ended up costing McDonald's Millions turns out some of the designs on the glasses contained high traces of cadmium a chemical that in high enough concentration is basically poison and thanks to an overly informative article covering the controversy I now know way too much about cadmium essentially this chemical is commonly used as a pigment for coloring glassware and is pivotal in producing the colors orange and yellow this is where Puss and Boots comes in since the color of the character was primarily orange the cup would end up wildly exceeding the fda's pre-approved limit for cadmium so McDonald's took the proactive approach and recalled every single glass in an effort to round up as many as possible the company offered to buy back customers glasses for three dollars each and since they were originally sold for two dollars consumers could actually turn a profit of course McDonald's would lose money in the process but as far as they were concerned it was a much better option than a class-action lawsuit in the end the company ended up recalling over 12 million cups losing millions of dollars in the process considering the events some might actually applaud McDonald's for their proactive response but don't be fooled this is the same company that got excited about putting cartoon ears on minimum wage workers and it does not get more evil than that [Music] it seems like when it comes to Shrek marketing flops no other sequel had it worse than Shrek Forever After along with the glassware scare the film also received backlash when DreamWorks greenlit a promotional partnership with a men's fashion magazine v-man the publication in question decided to use Shrek's creative license by superimposing the film's characters into racy photo shoots alongside suggestively clothed models resulting in one of the most tasteless and awkward marketing campaigns I have ever seen I mean look at this not even Shrek wants to be there of course v-man's attempts to market the movie to adults fell on deaf ears and DreamWorks issued a public statement regretting the partnership ouch the first honorable mention in the world of Shrek themed marketing goes to Vidalia onions in this day and age there really aren't many clever ways to increase the sale of onions there's really not much to them but Vidalia got creative and partnered with DreamWorks in 2010 to promote just that onions and by god it worked turns out an easy way to increase sales by over 30 percent is to stick a cardboard cut out of Shrek in front of your product and that's exactly what Vidalia did seems like as long as Shrek was on the cover kids were interested and sales of Adalia onions inevitably skyrocketed is this kind of a testament to the manipulative marketing power of child mascots probably but at least in this case it wasn't Twinkies [Music] Shrek's 10-year marketing run McDonald's would produce countless Happy Meals toys and Specialty menu items to promote Shrek movies but no item came close to being as weird as the Shrek ravioli dippers exclusively sold in Australia this pasta-based menu item was served as a limited time meal to promote Shrek III of course the reason it comes across is so bizarre is because it Bears absolutely no resemblance to any specific food at all I mean the shrek-shaped ravioli barely looks like pasta and for some reason it's meant to be eaten with tongs this Shrek boy Rd is just another of McDonald's numerous attempts at trying to put pasta on the menu which is something they literally can't stop trying for some reason as for me I'll just stick with my Shrek shake and fries thanks for NASCAR Legends Tony Stewart and Bobby Labonte would make DreamWorks history when they sported custom Shrek 2 liveries on their cars in 2004 and while these paint schemes made impressive display pieces in diecast form nothing came quite as close to the legendary collectibility of the action figures [Music] that's right these were actually made for some reason and to this day the Target demographic eludes me but in a sport where sponsorships are practically ingrained into the lifeblood of the sport itself it doesn't surprise me that people bought these things I mean this is the same organization that sold an entire night of racing to a children's movie Sports presents the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 300. [Music] I think we can all agree that when it came to movie marketing Shrek was an absolute force that was rivaled by very few films in terms of sheer marketing power to this day the level of cultural virality that the franchise still maintains is actually quite impressive considering the last movie came out over a decade ago and now with rumors of a fifth Shrek installment finally in the works there won't be much we can do when advertisers once again start seeing green thanks for watching

Channel: slow start

Views: 1,356,870

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Id: MqZ9SRlBjGo

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022