I honestly don't care about Sobe or that OWI put it in a game. I'm fairly new to Oddworld, and it's unlikely that I'm going to be able to play MO, so I can't say that the presence of Sobe would break the spell and ruin the game for me. Product placement happens in movies all the time, and to some extent it seems like a typical Oddworld irony to insert some "relic" of the real world into the Oddworld universe.
Having said that, I have noticed that several members have taken great pains to point out that OWI got no actual money for putting Sobe in the game. I fail to see the difference between getting money for it and getting promotion for MO that it would otherwise have had to pay for. If putting Sobe in the game is seen as something less than desirable, getting "just" promotion rather than money isn't going to make having done it any more palatable to those who are pissed off about it.
Personally, I would have gone with Ben & Jerry's ice cream. They are very environmentally conscious and give away 1 percent of their profits. And I'll bet Coffee Heath Bar Crunch tastes a hell of a lot better than Sobe.
