April 21, 1996: This PowerBook Will Self Destruct…Causing $15 Million in Damage

Product placement is a growing method of advertising today but the concept is far from new. Apple undertook a huge product placement marketing campaign when it hitched the PowerBook 5300 to the Tom Cruise vehicle Mission Impossible.

Apple came on board too late in the game to exert any influence on the script so moviegoers missed the point when Tom Cruise used a PowerBook 5300 that featured not the familiar GUI of a Mac but a command line interface.

Even worse than the movie's myriad of shortcomings were the PowerBook 5300 flaws: the case was recalled by Apple for chipping, the batteries were recalled for spontaneous combustion, and the performance is recalled as being astonishingly poor for a PowerPC based machine. Apple announced the $15 million movie tie-in fiasco this week in 1996.

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