Booty Sweat - Fake Movie Product to Hit Real Store Shelves

In a move fitting the promotion of a movie within a movie where real actors play fake actors shooting a pretend action film in a actual war zone (that they don't know is really real), the studio, Paramount Pictures, has licensed a fictitious brand as a real beverage.

Based on the positive reaction during screenings to a satirical commercial for Booty Sweat, a made up energy drink that appears throughout the movie Tropic Thunder, Paramount has decided to license an actual drink that will be available at retailers nationwide, as well as on Amazon.com and in college bookstores, to help crank up the movie's promotion machine.

In an AdAge.com interview, Michael Corcoran, Paramount's president of consumer products, said "several hundred thousand" cases of Booty Sweat have already been produced.

And those cases have been targeted to specific audiences. The drink will be available in two different packages, one designed for the urban market, and one for the rural market. Those buying Booty Sweat in major cities will get treated to a description of it as a "delicious and bump up struttin' energy drink that will pump up a brotha's ass right-pronto. This swill will crank yo' metabolism up skippin' right over jiggy to straight G-pimp level, word to your mutha. Brothas will be layin' down the 2-3 on the wiggy jig focusing the energy flow into cold-face benjamins that will fill yo' pimp pockets to burstin'. Damn straight! Booty Sweat will keep a brotha pitchin' straight game all night to the baby-dolls." Those in rural areas, who apparently don't rate a clever description, just get a plain can.

While this may be the first time a fake movie product has been launched ahead of the movie it appears in, it's not the first time a product seen on the big screen has ended up on store shelves. A cauldron-ful of candy products from the Harry Potter movies hit shelves after the blockbusters hit the screens.

And last year, a California entrepreneur licensed the name "Brawndo" to create and market the energy drink appearing in the little-seen Mike Judge movie, Idiocracy. The same guy is also selling Sex Panther, a cologne based on the one Will Ferrell's character swears by in Anchorman.

With a popular movie character making outrageous claims about your product - claims you could never make in an actual ad campaign, for instance, claiming your product is "150% more awesome than any cologne. Ever." - this could be a case of reverse product placement that proves highly successful. And lucrative. Which means look for a lot more faux-to-real products to hit stores from marketers looking to reach us ad-weary consumers.

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