The standard Disney Channel equivalent of the Apple iPhone seems to be the "zPhone", and it factors in episodes of many episodes of Disney Channel series such Hannah Montana, Shake it Up, and A.N.T. Farm.
Used to an extreme in every single Nickelodeon show produced by Schneider's Bakery Productions. This includes All That and The Amanda Show (mostly lampshaded) as well as Drake & Josh and Zoey 101. Extremely narmful in iCarly, where their webshow is called "iCarly" but they still listen to "pearpods," talk on their "pearphones" and lug around oversized "pearpads," and all the computers have a pear logo on them. It's the same with sister show Victorious. Drake and Josh has a Game Sphere (parody of Nintendo's GameCube) and Megan has a Pintendo GS (a parody of the Nintendo DS).
The i in iCarly stands for Internet, not as a reference to the Apple products. Though, Dan Schneider himself has a liking for Apple computers, thus he parodies it in the form of the Pear products in the show.
iCarly also features that orange rag they sell on TV at 2 in the morning, the "Sham-Pow."
Both Drake & Josh and iCarly have featured the Chinese restaurant chain "B.F. Wangs" instead of P.F. Chang's.
In the Amanda Bynes sitcom What I Like About You (another Schneider show), Holly buys an "I-Bop" and downloads hundreds of songs onto it.
Interestingly, in later episodes of iCarly and Victorious, the PearPhones and PearPads themselves were shaped like pears, and not like the usual rectangles.
Sam & Cat went so far as to lampshade it. "You see, they can't use real Pear products on the show, so they replace them with Bananas."
Food Network has an entire internal crew whose job is to hide brand names on food and drink items from view, as shows about food often show entire shelves with dozens of different name-brand ingredients. Much of it involve creating fake labels in this style, such that the viewers can reasonably guess what the product is supposed to be, and applying them over the actual items. For instance, a bottle of Coca-Cola would have a made-up name (which isn't consistent from show to show, but it doesn't need to be) and a standard bottle shape to avoid trademark and copyright issues with The Coca-Cola Company, but the label would have the characteristic red with white swirly lettering to make it clear that the chefs are working with Coca-Cola (or drinking it).
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Season 7 of 24 involved a chemical weapons threat perpetrated by none other than "Starkwood," the U.S.-based private army/security contracting firm.
The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica has a Spaceline called Pan Galactic which uses an identical symbol to Pan Am, examples of which can be seen here◊ and here.◊
This was apparently a Shout-Out to 2001: A Space Odyssey (which featured Pan Am commercial space shuttles from the Earth to orbit and the Moon) rather than a get around for copyright, which makes slightly more sense In-Universe since the series is set over 150,000 years prior to Pan Am ever existing.
It kind of also sounds like a Shout-Out to Hitchhiker's Guide's Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
In Beetleborgs, a bottle of "Fountain Don't" (Mountain Dew) is used to trick one of the main characters to drink a mutation potion.
Indian youth channel [V]'s mystery-drama Best Friends Forever? features two instances - Pikipedianote bearing the exact same name as thisPikmin wiki is a complete coincidence. and Jo-Jo Pizza (for local chain Smokin' Joes).
In the university canteen, soft drinks such as Dr. Pepper and Diet Cola are sold in cans identical to the real-life brands. Sheldon's non-existent cousin (who was made up to fool Penny) had apparently escaped rehab and was staying at a Motel 8.
After being disappointed by the taste of orange juice and amount of crispiness of a toasted English muffin, Sheldon addresses a tub of margarine.
I have no trouble believing you're not butter.
Even Big Time Rush does this: e.g., "Cosmopilan", a bland-name version of Cosmopolitan.
An episode of The Bill featured the police looking for clues on the young female kidnap victim's "FaceSpace" page.
Billions: In Season Four, Bobby gets involved in a takeover of Salers, an old but failing department store chain with a logo that is clearly based on the old but failing Sears department store chain.
Blood Over Water has the villains work for Sleet Mountain. While there is a real Sleet Mountain Service Center in Newfoundland, the one in the story is a blatant stand-in for Ice Mountain. Even in the novelization, it's located "somewhere near Big Rapids." The nearby town of Stanwood hosts a real-life Ice Mountain bottling plant. In the original cut, it was Ice Mountain. Led to a lot of Clumsy Copyright Censorship later on.
On Bones, Hodgins and Zack once tested whether zooplankton could survive feeding on toxic human flesh using a chunk of poisoned meat in a tank with "Sea Chimps" (= "Sea Monkeys"). Averted with the meat, which was openly stated to be Spam.
The Boys (2019): Vought International is such a massive company that they have their own counterparts to real products, such as "Voughtify"note Spotify, "Vought+"note Disney+, big conventions like "VoughtCon"note Comic-Con, Voughtlandnote Disneyland and a movie franchise dubbed the "Vought Cinematic Universe", or "VCU"note Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Expanded Universe.
Abbi works at Soulstice, a parody of the New York-based and extremely yuppy-friendly Equinox and Soul Cycle gym chains.
Ilana's place of 'work', Deals Deals Deals, is based on a similar company called Lifebooker that Abbi, Ilana, and writer/director Lucia Aniello used to work at.
Trey's fridge is stocked full of Thinny Chicks wine, a parody of Skinnygirl.
In "Jews on a Plane", Abbi and Ilana take a Birthmarc trip, a parody of Birthright Israel.
"Tito's" brand potato chips show up on numerous occasions. The bag looks very similar to a Frito-Lay Ruffles bag.
Happy Cat in Season 8, obviously intended to be Hello Kitty.
The Carol Burnett Show had multiple sketches which parodied commercials where a character is approached by a stranger asking them to try a new product. In all of the sketches, people enter a woman's kitchen and tell her about various fake products.
In one sketch, the products included Leg & Hammer (Arm & Hammer) baking soda and Borito (Purina) Dog Chow.
In one sketch, the products were Charming (Charmin) toilet paper, Pufferin (Bufferin), American Depressed (American Express) traveler's checks and Joyful (Joy) dishwashing liquid.
One sketch had Smooth and Dry (Soft & Dri) deodorant, Lady Schtick (Lady Stick) deodorant, Bubblemint (Doublemint) gum and stockbroking firm E.F. Sutton (E.F. Hutton).
One such sketch included Left Guard (Right Guard) deodorant, Dirt Around the Collar ("Ring around the collar" in Wisk detergent commercials) and Minnie Made (Minute Maid) orange juice.
In a sketch with several dolls, one is named Barbrie (Barbie) and one is named G.I. Jack (G.I. Joe).
One sketch had Glomet (Comet) cleanser, Tallstate (Allstate) Insurance, Franny Goose (Granny Goose) potato chips, Grab (Glad) bags and Left Guard (Right Guard) deodorant.
In one episode the title character's mother is making a "MyFace" account.
Castle:MyFace? Don't you mean— Alexis: Don't bother, I've been trying to correct her all day.
In another episode, the team is tracking a money order from a bank called "Machovia."
"YouWillViewIt.com" is a video website.
Chuck features a smoothie place called "Orange Orange." Their logo is written in a font identical to that of Orange Julius's logo. They also have Buy More, a poorly-disguised version of Best Buy. Instead of a Geek Squad, they have a Nerd Herd. There's also Large Mart, presumably a knock-off of Wal-Mart.
An episode of Come Fly With Me has Taaj (one of the airport staff) driving around a buggy belonging to an organisation called the UKAA (UK Aviation Authority), a play on real life organisation "the British Aviation Authority". The buggy features a red version of the BAA logo, whereas in reality it is green.
Comic Relief 1989 featured a parody of the hugely popular Nescafe adverts (the ones with Tony Head and Sharon Maughn).
"Nafcafe Gold Bland. If you like it that much, get your own bloody jar!"
One episode has Annie eating a bag of "Let's" potato chips, obviously in the style of Lay's potato chips. The Tag in the final episode of Season 3, "Introduction To Finality," has Leonard doing a YouTube review of Let's chips.
If anyone is drinking a can of beer it will be "Olde British 800", looking very much like the "Olde English 800" malt liquor.
Characters buy their food at "Freshco" rather than Tesco.note Amusingly, there now is a grocery chain called Freshco, albeit in Canada. There's also the search engine "Voggle" (instead of Google) and a social media website called Face-Scene with green graphics — despite other characters also referencing Facebook.
Later lampshaded by Harry Hill's TV Burp with a skit about them going to "Frainsbury's" (Sainsbury's) as well.
CSI-verse: The "big 3" of the franchise all use World Send package delivery service.
CSI has a few examples of renamed Playboy-type magazines. One is the ep where a guy walks out of the desert to board a bus. He had burned some of his belongings just beforehand; Nick and Greg find the mags among the remnants.
CSI: NY refers to Facebook simply as "profile pages" a few times. Other "bland names" are "Mighty Glue", "Clog Away" drain cleaner, "Handi-Foam" spray insulation, and "Kiddie Clay" (in a kindergarten, for Play Doh).
Degrassi tends to come up with Bland Name Products for anything media-related, and avert it otherwise unless something is an independent small business in-universe. They seem to use a lot of Canada-only brands so the aversions aren't immediately apparent to viewers in the US and elsewhere. They also use fictionalized names for Canadian universities but real names of U.S. ones.
A Different World, which takes place at a historically black college, features fake historically black sororities and fraternities, although extras are seen in the background wearing real sorority/fraternity paraphernalia. Dwayne and Ron attempt to join "Kappa Lambda Nu" and Whitley is a member of "Alpha Delta Rho", which combines the names of some of the more well known black sororities (Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, and Sigma Gamma Rho).
"The Web of Fear"note at least in the reconstruction — the chocolate is only seen in a Missing Episode and the telesnaps don't show it clearly prominently features a bar of Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate, with packaging resembling the 1930s Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate design (including the initials CDM, rather than CFM, on the milk churn). Doubles as a fun little injoke as Douglas Camfield was the director of the serial.
Early in the new series, the search engine that present-day humans were likely to use was search-wise.net. This was a real but non-functional website with a publicly accessible front page, which is archived here on the Wayback Machine.
A publication printed on pink paper called the "Investor's Post" in season 1, an apparent stand-in for the real life Financial Times.
There is an online community called "Everyone" which works somewhat similar hacks as Anonymous. And "Jamaica Quay" for Pirate Bay.
In one episode, one of the suspects was involved in smuggling Barnen Delight, an Italian chocolate egg with a toy inside that is illegal in the US because the toys are considered choking hazards, exactly like the real-world Kinder Surprise. ("Barnen" is Swedish for children, "Kinder" is German.)
In the "Everybody Hates Halloween" episode, Julius buys Gravy Ways (Milky Ways), M&N's (M&M's), and Butterthumbs (Butterfingers) as a way of saving money on Halloween candy.
The family also uses Tussin (Robitussin cough syrup) as a cure-all for every type of ailment.
Tonya: Mom! Chris got hit by a bus! [Rochelle is seen grabbing her purse and an economy-size bottle of Tussin as she runs out the door.]
Tussin is actually an "off brand" name. Cheaper version of the brand name but perhaps not quite as effective. Sold in Walmart stores, for example.
Chris at one point mentions that their family would buy boxes of "Cookie" from the store. Not "Cookies," just "Cookie," as in one giant cookie in a box that they would have to cut up and share.
Everybody Loves Raymond episode "Home from School". While Raymond's son Michael is eating breakfast, Raymond pours him a heaping bowl of Fiber 100 cereal. This is a reference to Real Life Fiber One cereal, made by General Mills.
A number of episodes feature "Love That Crunch" cereal, which is otherwise completely the same as "Cap'n Crunch", including the character on the front.
Another episode had "Finger Lickin' Chicken," which was clearly Kentucky Fried Chicken under a different name... right down to The Colonel himself being on the bucket.
Other episodes have had, for example, "Sprito" replace "Sprite."
Ghosts (US): The Chekhov Chill drink from "Trevor's Pants" is a thinly disguised Smirnoff Ice, but the name also lampshades that it functions as the episode's Chekhov's Gun.
In Hannah Montana, there's Standford University with an added D. May possibly be in a different location then Stanford given how Miley is able to drive back and forth a few times from Malibu in about a day when it usually would take between 6-7 hours one way. This could just be a case of Artistic License. It wouldn't be the first time.
Happens in-universe in Happy Endings when the group crack open an unbreakable pinata filled with off-brand candy like Two Musketeers, Skinnles, Senior Mints, Sophomore Mints, and Reestie's Peanut Butter Clorps.
Max: Even the ingredients are bonk. This says it has "artishishal flavouring".
Harry Hill's TV Burp had a skit featuring the shopping channel OVC, instead of QVC.
In Hidarime Tantei EYE, characters can be seen using a search engine called "Bogel."
On The Inside Man, Mark and AJ take down Mark's handler in part by tracking him because of information that he shared on a mobile app called "Snap Penguins," an equivalent of SnapChat.
Inspector Koo has characters using the search engine "Woegle" and finding images on social media site "Witter".
The 'Friendface' episode features, as well as the eponymous social networking site, soft drink "Cuke", resplendent in exactly the same packaging as Coca-Cola.
In a later episode: "This man has no online presence. He's not on Friendface, he's not on Jitter."
Janda Kembang: The second episode has characters trying out dating app Minder, standing in for Tinder while also being an Indonesian word for "feeling inferior".
While the Legends were disbanded, Sara took up a job working at "Sink Shower & Stuff", a parody of "Bed Bath & Beyond".
"Beebo, God of War" opens at a Toys Are We. The eponymous Hug-Me Beebo (the must-have toy of Christmas 1992) is a sort of cross between a Tickle-Me Elmo and a Furby.
"The Satanist's Apprentice" includes what is clearly a Tiffany lamp in Constantine's house, but calls it a Bethany lamp. (Bethany lamps seem to be a real thing, but don't look like that.)
Leverage had an interesting twist to this in season 1: Instead of having fake products, they would have real products, but would never show their names or labels. For example, Hardison is clearly seen drinking orange Jones soda, but the front of the label was always against his palm or otherwise turned away from the camera.
In the Lewis episode "Allegory of Love", Hathaway hands Lewis an article he printed from "Netipedia", which has an "i" logo instead of the jigsaw globe, but otherwise looks exactly like The Other Wiki (although the article in question — for Jorge Luis Borges' fictional location Uqbar — doesn't exist, being a redirect to the story it appears in).
In Little Britain, Judy and Maggie belong to the fictional "Women's Association" instead of the Women's Institute. In the initial broadcast of their sketches, they were from the Women's Institute, but it was hastily changed when the real organisation did not want to be associated with such vulgar characters.
Made For Love is centered around a massively powerful and invasive tech company named "Gogol".
The CBCHigh SchoolSitcomMr. D is an interesting case; the school's name (XavierAcademy) and uniforms suggest it's a Catholic school, but that's never stated outright and there are no priests or nuns in sight.
in the Murder, She Wrote episode "Murder of the Month Club", the infomercial studio's green room has a vending machine with what looks like the Coca-Cola logo, except it just says "Cold Drinks".
The show has a box of Dunkin' Donuts in almost every episode... except the familiar logo has been changed so that it reads "Donuts Donuts".
They zigzagged whether FYI was a CBS News show or not; for the most part, there wasn't an eye to be seen anywhere but they mentioned CBS reporters and anchors as coworkers and spoke of the network by name. The Revival plays it straight with CNC and Wolf Network standing in for CNN and Fox News respectively.
In the Hobgoblins episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, an educational short Crow has made is shown on a "Stony" TV.
NCIS does this with several different brands. GSM for FHM, Cybervid for Erbdiyr/ YouYube and Pagebook for Myspace/Facebook, depending on what the plot demands. Possibly the strangest example is the 'Bearey Smiles' talking teddy bear ment to be a stand-in for the Tickle Me Elmo craze of the nineties. It's... underwhelming.
DC Blend as a stand-in for Starbucks is probably the most noticeable because the cups are on almost every episode.
One episode also features Lei's potato chips.
On Now and Again, trucks with the logo "Toys B' Fun" were often seen.
NUMB3RS: CalSci is this to Caltech, though the university serves as an inspiration.
Odd Squad is well known for the Shmumbers brand, which graces almost anything and everything in the show that could conceivably be covered. Specific examples include:
Shmumber Beat, Otto's favorite magazine, which is a parody of the magazine Tiger Beat (which, funnily enough, is marketed to girls, not boys).
Shmumber Illustrated (Sports Illustrated), a magazine that Olive reads at the beginning of "Whatever Happened to Agent Oz?"
Shmumberger, which appears to be a parody of Burger King going by the logo.
In "Xs and Os", one of the items in Olympia's welcome basket to the X's was a box of Shmumberfits crackers (Ritz).
"Negative Town" has a non-Shmumbers example with the Discomfort Inn (Comfort Inn).
Another non-Shmumbers example occurs in "Ocean and the Fly", with the butter labels the pirate presents to Ocean and Oona looking similar to the logos for Land-O'-Lakes and Sun-Maid (the latter of which does not sell butter).
Yet another non-Shmumbers example: Oddstagram, which has been around since Season 1 but wasn't named in-show until the Season 3 premiere.
In "Happily Ever Odd", there's Shmumbies (Wheaties), Shmumbeeos (Cheerios), and Shmumberade (Powerade).
Both The Shmumbertimes (from "Odd Squad Needs You" in Season 2) and Ahead of the Times (from the episode of the same name in Season 3) have been used as parody names for The New York Times.
Min Woo is wearing a "Permes of Paris" shirt in Oh! My Lady.
Open Heart has "pinblr", which seems to be a bland variation of both Pinterest and Tumblr.
Radio Enfer: One episode has Maria trying to get a job for a company known as Pupperwhale, which is basically Tupperware with a different name.
In Riverdale, Hermione Lodge teases her husband, having noticed a "Spiffany's" bag, about whether it contains a "Glamergé" egg; Veronica borrows her mother's "American Excess" credit card.
Witches trying to magically create brand goods automatically create a Bland Name Product equivalent with an obviously similar name. According to Hilda, this is the result of the Witches' Council's intervention after the market was flooded by magically created Gucci knockoffs. They can't even conjure Rollerblade inline skates; instead, they get "Rollerblahs".
Other products that appeared in the episode were "N&N's" instead of M&M's; "Butterthumb" instead of Butterfinger; "Schmickers" in place of Snickers; "Popsi" instead of Pepsi; and in place of a Yoo-hoo, Sabrina manages to conjure a "Hey, Over Here".
The spin-off novels take this idea and run with it. Any fast food Sabrina conjures up automatically comes from a restaurant called "Burger Queen."
In a Season 6 episode the product keeps the name but the concept is different. Sabrina goes to the Other Realm version of Hootersnote A Fanservice with a Smile restaurant chain where the waitresses wear tight t-shirts and hot pants and discovers that it features dancers in owl costumes.
Sabrina: "Hooters is a lot different back home..."
A Saturday Night Live sketch parodied a series of Taster's Choice instant coffee ads with an ad for "Tayster's Choice" spermicidal jelly.
The games in the background of the Sesame Street Community Centre include Dos (for Uno; funnily enough, Dos would later become a real thing as a spin-off of the original game), Tricycle playing cards (for Bicycle), and a very Sesame Street take on a Parental Bonus with Cards Supporting Humanity (a party game for wonderful people).
Sherlock has "MePhone" as a stand in for "iPhone."
On Silicon Valley, which is largely about the start-up culture in Silicon Valley, the production team said one of the hardest parts of character design was the company names. Nearly everything they came up with was taken. Although other companies are sometimes mentioned by name, the main character Richard works for Hooli, a thinly-veiled parody of Google.
In an early episode of Sliders the gang visited an alternate world where computers ran on the "Doors" operating system.
It's easy to miss, but in Spaced places like the JobCentre aren't given their real-life branding. The real-life JobCentre decided (perhaps a touch humourlessly) that they didn't want to give the impression that any of their staff would give preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of how they felt about The Phantom Menace.
In the TV mini-series for Stephen King's The Stand, the beer two of Flagg's guards are drinking is labeled "Beer," although the cans are colored and the font used is a very near match to Coors.
In Start-Up a character uses the search engine "Coocle".
Stranger Things: Murray can be seen drinking "Slotichnaya" vodka a few times in Season 2. However, most products shown on the show are real, such as Schlitz beer. Come Season 3, many of the shops in Starcourt are real (though many of the companies have since folded), except the ones where sufficient action takes place.
With the central Roy family being a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of the Murdochs, their news channel ATN is obviously a stand-in for Fox News, another news channel that is frequently accused of being a right-wing mouthpiece. Likewise, the liberal PGM news network, ATN's biggest rival, obviously stands for CNN, which is Fox News' biggest rival.
Edgy digital media outlet Vaulter is a mix between VICE, Buzzfeed and Gawker. The office is eerily similar to VICE's, the inane headlines are in the style of VICE and Buzzfeed, and the Vaulter plotline in the show mirrors Gawker's real-life trajectory.
In Supernatural, the search engine used is "Search the Web." "BFFLink.net" is a social networking site. In the episode "In My Time of Dying," Sam uses a "Mystical Talking Board" to communicate with Dean during his out-of-body experience.
The Swinging episode "Get Lost" begins with Rosy and one of her friends playing a fictional version of Milton Bradley's Twister called "Tangles".
Lampshaded and played with in the later seasons of 'Til Death. Joey attempts to prove that everyone's living in a TV show and points to the numerous fake brands and trademark dodges as examples. Earlier, Eddie and Joy are shown replacing boxes of actual brand-name product with Bland Name Products because cash is tight and they can't afford actual brands anymore.
An episode of Too Close for Comfort has Cartoonist Henry Rush in Hollywood to turn his comic strip character Cosmic Cow into a Network Cartoon Show. The pitch meeting takes place in a room with a giant window that shows a panoramic view of the city, including a billboard for 'J&C' Scotch Whiskey.
Trace features "Face to Face" social network which resembles OK.ru in terms of interface and VK and Facebook in terms of functions.
In "Cold Reading", Dick Noble, African Explorer is sponsored by the cereal Krisp-O-Meal, which is based on Corn Flakes.
In "The After Hours", Marsha Cole buys a Cornfield Kids doll for her landlord's daughter Jennifer, a reference to the Cabbage Patch Kids. The doll itself is a repurposed Cabbage Patch Kid in a corn ear.
In the Unforgettable episode "The Man in the Woods," the main characters visit a diner whose beer list includes Spam Adams and Limstel.
Skist, the soft drink of choice on Veronica Mars, is a shortening of Sunkist.
The Wire: When Frank Sobotka suspects the police are survailing the docks, he switches around a contraband container and a regular one to see if the police do anything. This leads to Glekas receiving a container full of Taiwanese dolls in a box labeled "Bobbie"
One sketch features a kid's mom finding his stash of "Playtoy" magazines.
The series also skewered the "Pepsi Challenge" commercials on various occasions — in one episode Alasdair takes the "Pep Pop Challenge," and in a cut scene from the pilot episode of Canada-only spinoff Whatever Turns You On, Ruth Buzzi participates in the "Peski Challenge" (electrocuted by Dungeon Master Nasti when she gives the incorrect answer as to which soft drink she prefers).
The show could and did get away with not using Bland Name Products when it was a local-only show in Ottawa, Ontario. For example, the local version of the Peski Challenge sketch (featuring a local child actress instead of Ruth Buzzi) refers to Pepsi by name, and a mother (played by the same child actress) "gives" her children McCain's Deep and Delicious Pies (in the face), replaced on Whatever Turns You On by Ruth Buzzi and the fictional "McSplat's Deep and Delectable Pies."
In one episode of You're the Worst, Jimmy receives a "Manchester FC" football jersey from his father.
Several characters make references to the Red Napkin meal prep delivery service, a clear parallel to Blue Apron.
. The X-Files episode Brand X lampshades this fairly heavily.
