Merie Weismiller Wallac/DreamworksParamount Pictures is hoping Booty Sweat leaves a good taste in America's mouth. (We know, it felt disgusting just writing that.)
The studio has announced plans to market a real version of the aforenamed energy drink that can be spied periodically throughout the upcoming Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as actors who get left behind in an actual war zone after ticking off the director of the war film they're supposed to be acting in.
While product tie-ins and increasingly viral marketing campaigns are nothing new—what would McDonald's and Burger King do without Disney, hobbits and superheroes?—Paramount believes that by actually creating a usable product to promote an upcoming film, not to mention one that will compete against Rockstar and Red Bull, they've broken the mold.
"Not to my knowledge has this ever been done before," Paramount's president of consumer products, Michael Corcoran, told Advertising Age. "We're very excited, because it has the potential to live for quite a while, well beyond the film."
Products such as Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, the crops-killing Gatorade-like substance in the 2006 Mike Judge comedy Idiocracy, have hit stores before, but usually not until long after a film's release, once fans are more familiar with the concepts. Brawndo just debuted in December, while Sex Panther, named after Paul Rudd's most outré cologne in Anchorman, won't be on shelves until September, and the film premiered in 2004.
But you'll actually be able to chug a can of cherry-tinged Booty Sweat while watching Tropic Thunder, which rolls into theaters Aug. 15.
It will be available in college bookstores, the retail outlets Hot Topic, Wherehouse and Coconuts and through Amazon.com. A few hundred thousand cases have been produced so far.