Generally yeah, product placement in the storyline is a bad thing, and worse than regular product placement. But Evolution was so subtle, so funny and unexpected that it somehow worked. The brand wasn’t just paying to have its name mentioned throughout the movie, it was a kind of last minute, almost self-depricating presentation in a vaguely endearing way - not a certainly endearing way, but one that didn’t piss you off. The characters who first promoted Head & Shoulders were literally the biggest losers of the story up to that point. The purpose of mentioning Head & Shoulders was to make fun of the seriousness of the drama and the whole premise of the movie.

Meanwhile, Olive Garden was only presented in a positive fashion in Sonic, not just by the incompetent military but also the main human character, such that you couldn’t really be sure they were telling a joke by mentioning it - because they weren’t, the purpose of mentioning it was purely to service the brand, at the expense of the story.

Shazam 2 is not a good example lol, except as a generally bad movie. If you’re drawing parallels with Sonic and Shazam that really doesn’t bode well for Sonic.

I do remember the Skittles insert into Shazam 2, but by that point the movie had really lost so much credibility that I couldn’t have cared less. Meanwhile, Sonic was a generally good movie that was somewhat ruined by product placement and Carrey’s alt-right lines. While he was the villain, many of his lines were never presented in such a way that you were meant to disagree with them.