In what’s arguably the best product placement of all time, these are a couple clips from a 2003 television broadcast of the original Star Wars trilogy in Chile by Channel 13, which spliced beer commercials into the actual movie to avoid having to go to commercial breaks. In one of the scenes below, Obi Wan Kenobi tells Luke, “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough,” and reaches for a beer. Perfect placement! In the other clips, Obi goes for another beer (I think he might have a problem), and even Emperor Palpetine grabs a cold one! Unfortunately, George Lucas felt the edits were in poor taste (well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black!) and “filed a grievance with the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics, leading to a judgment in Lucas Films’ favor. The council decreed that the commercials were not to be aired again.” Dammit, if anybody is going to watch bad edits, they’re going to be MY bad edits, I imagine George thinking to himself while trying to figure out how to fit Jar Jar into the original trilogy.
Around 2003 in Chile, when the original trilogy of Star Wars began airing on television there, they did this funny thing to avoid cutting to commercial breaks. They stitched the commercials into the films themselves. Here is one of them, with the English dub added in. pic.twitter.com/wC7N2vPNvv
— Windy 🛸 (@heyitswindy) March 2, 2024