Bravo's reality competition programs have never shied away from aggressive product placement–Top Chef contestants cook in the GE Kitchen with GE appliances, Padma Lakshmi is always slowly droning on about using things from "the Glad family of products," Project Runway contestants are constantly reminded to use the Macy's accessory wall, etc.–but this season of Top Chef has been particularly aggressive about building challenges around advertisers.
There have only been 7 episodes this season, but so far we've seen challenges centered around Kingsford charcoal, Florida citrus, Bombay Sapphire, Coldstone Creamery, and Bertolli frozen dinners. Basically, if you see a commercial for something during
Top Chef, chances are that product will be not-so-seamlessly integrated into an upcoming challenge on the show in the near future.
Some of these advertiser challenges were better than others, but last night's preliminary challenge–come up with some mixin's for Coldstone Creamery ice cream–has to be the lamest one so far. Finding something that tastes good with ice cream is really not that difficult–unless of course you make it difficult by trying to make something like "white chocolate cauliflower" into an ice cream mixin'.
So what other advertiser challenges does Top Chef have in store for the rest of the season? Based on commercials that aired during the show last night, here are a few possible future advertiser challenges: —The Pantene Shiny Food Challenge: Make Pantene's Brunette Expressions shampoo taste good. Contestants have 30 minutes and unlimited access to the Top Chef pantry. —The Glad ForceFlex Challenge: Contestants are divided into teams of three. Each team is then put inside one Glad ForceFlex garbage bag (they're very stretchy!) with the following items: 1 Bunsen burner, 1 egg, and 1 comically small frying pan. Whichever team can make the fluffiest scrambled egg without suffocating or tearing a hole in their incredibly strong Glad garbage bag (featuring Glad's patented ForceFlex technology) wins. —The Shopping At Target Is So Much Fun Challenge: Make a three-course dinner that demonstrates, through food, how much fun shopping at Target is! Contestants have 4 hours and a budget of one $50 Target gift card. —The Hot Ringtone Challenge: Contestants must make an appetizer that is as hot as the hottest ringtones that you can download now by texting #3771 on your mobile phone. —The Rush Hour 3 Challenge: Make a dish that emphasizes how hard it is to understand the words coming out of Chris Tucker's mouth. —The I Cooked This Without Leaving My Saturn Challenge: As everyone knows, Saturn-owners love their Saturns, so much so that they never want to leave them! This challenge is simple: Prepare an upscale, 5-course, New American meal without leaving your Saturn Vue SUV. Contestants will be given 6 hours, a budget of $300, and a hot-plate that plugs into the Saturn Vue SUV's lighter.