This is getting close to a week old, but is still quite hilarious, even more so with Stallone's signature bad timing of taking a huge ad contract in wartime.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone, mighty destroyer of Soviet opponents in the "Rambo" and "Rocky" movies, now plans to advertise Russian vodka.Russian vodka producer Synergy said on Friday it had signed a one-year contract with Stallone, who will appear in television and newspaper advertisements for the vodka brand Russian Ice, starting September 1.
Sources valued the deal at $1 million.
Stallone -- whose film character John Rambo killed Soviet troops by the dozen in Afghanistan and whose Rocky Balboa humiliated Soviet boxer Ivan Drago -- will advertise the product under the slogan: "There is a bit of Russian in all of us."
"The advertising campaign concept was based on the fact that the actor has Russian roots," Synergy said in a statement, referring to Stallone's great-grandmother, Rosa Rabinovich, from the Ukrainian town of Odessa.
The Rambo and Rocky movies were banned in the Soviet Union, but were hot property in the country's underground VHS market.
