As far as "product placement"... yes, in movies and TV shows, some companies pay for product placement as an advertising thing, but if the product is named in a book without the company's knowledge and approval, the publisher and author can run into problems, possible trademark violation among them. When product placement is paid by the company, there's paperwork done to indicate that the movie/show is using the product *with* the consent of the company.
Also, if anything even slightly uncomplimentary is said about the product, there could be other issues...
Alice in Wonderland, though, to the best of my knowledge, is public domain. Unless you were specifically referencing the Disney version, I'm not sure why there would have been a problem there.
PLEASE NOTE: I am not a lawyer nor have any legal training. I'm basing my statements on discussions with publishers, other authors, and a friend who's a paralegal with a patent-law firm that occasionally runs into trademark cases.
As for MuseItUp, I had one book with them, published in September 2012, as I've stated previously in this thread. The book was an urban fantasy novel. It was published under my YA pen name, after I discussed with the publisher which pen name to use. I think that between the genre and the pen name choice (my Jo Ramsey readers look exclusively for YA, which this book wasn't), the book struggled from the start. In two years, I earned around $13 in royalties. I asked for, and received, a rights reversion in August of this year.
I don't feel this is MuseItUp's fault in any way; after a year when I contacted Lea with my concerns about sales, she made several suggestions of things she/MuseItUp were willing to do promotion-wise to see if sales would improve, and I was not given any type of "you aren't doing enough promo" response from her. She followed through with her suggestions, and I boosted my own promo; it just didn't work.