• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 20, 2011

Toy marketer Hasbro may have had more success with product placement in 2011 than any other company. Nielsen data shows its brand integrations accounted for four of the 10 most-recalled product placements for the year in broadcast prime time.

Appearances on CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” for Twister (November) and Dungeons & Dragons (October) finished third and sixth, respectively. And both Scrabble (January) and Monopoly (October) on ABC drama “Desperate Housewives” finished 9th and 10th, respectively.

Purell had the most-recalled integration of the year with an Oct. 27 appearance on “Big Bang” when the product was used after a live snake was placed into a desk drawer.

Red Bull’s appearance in ABC comedy “Suburgatory” in September came in second. Ferrari on ABC’s “Castle” came in fourth, followed by Subway on NBC’s “Chuck.” Rolex’s Oct. 30 appearance on ABC drama “Pan Am” was seventh.

No particular placement on Fox cracked the top 10, although the network had the show “American Idol,” with the single most placements (577).

Also, none of the most recalled placements came in a reality series -– all were in a comedy or drama.

Purell on “Big Bang” was so dominant that its recall index at 271 trampled second-place Red Bull’s 214 (100 is an average).

The data was collected from Jan. 1-Nov. 30. A recall score is calculated by percentage of TV viewers who can recall a brand or product in an integration within 24 hours after exposure. An index is then created in comparison to a mean.

NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” followed “American Idol” as the top broadcast prime-time show in number of product placements at 533. Both shows swamped NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” which was third at 391.

ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and Fox’s “The X Factor” rounded out the top five.

As for most-liked ads of 2011, Volkswagen’s Super Bowl spot with a mini-Darth Vader continues to pick up honors in Nielsen’s research with a likeability index of 231. That topped a 15-second Oreo spot, where a son wakes up his dad for a Father’s Day delight, at 201.

Number three was a St. Jude’s ad with snowboarder Shaun White (191) and a Hallmark spot featuring a deployed solider sharing holidays with family with a picture book (190).

A Real California Milk ad rounded out the top five, and another Super Bowl spot, where a man licks Doritos crumbs off a coworker’s fingers, came in sixth.