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A couple of points. First, I actually did buy several VHS tapes at $80 a pop. The first $20 VHS tape was the Wraith of Khan in 1982, well before Batman in 1989. It was a long time before they started to put commercials on tapes. Yes, they did do trailers, but the commercials didn't come until much later. So commercials had absolutely nothing to do with dropping the price. The price dropped because some smart marketeers figured out that they could make a lot more money saleing several hundred thousand tapes at $19.95 than they could saleing twenty thousand at $80. It was a big gamble for them, but it paid off big time and kick started the VHS tape business.
While product placement does generate some income for movies, the primary money streams for movies are tickets and video rights, not product placement.
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