WEED, Calif. — Vaune Dillmann thought the wording on his bottle caps was just a clever play on the name of the northern California town where he brews his beer.
Federal alcohol regulators thought differently. They have ordered Dillmann to stop selling beer bottles with caps that say “Try Legal Weed.” The agency, which regulates the brewing industry, said the wording could “mislead consumers about the characteristics of the alcoholic beverage.”
Dillmann scoffs at the notion that his label has anything to do with smoking pot. “I’ve never tried marijuana in my life,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I don’t advocate that. It’s just our town’s name.”
Xobni, the word “inbox” spelled backwards, has created a new way to look at your email. Xobni takes the effort out of organizing, searching, and navigating your email.
I Love Blow. And I love the job Blow energy drink mix has done with their product naming and branding. But the maker of this new energy drink mix powder you can add to your favorite beverage is coming under pressure to rehab its image. I don’t know whether it’s the name, the powder, or the images of sexy, half-naked young women on their website.
Worried that Blow and similar products are glorifying drug use, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to the makers of the energy drink mix last month, threatening legal action if the company does not rehab its image.
Named after the well-known street name for cocaine, Blow comes under scrutiny for being packaged and marketed as an alternative to cocaine, as well as for not complying with federal drug laws.
The letter states that Blow itself is an unapproved drug, “intended to affect the structure or function of the body.”
It also states that the energy drink mix does not have an FDA-approved application that legalizes its sale.
With a logo spelled out in white, grainy powder and its product sold in vials, the similarities between Blow and its illegal namesake are evident.
Last year the brouhaha was over an energy drink called Cocaine.
On May 5th, 2007, Cocaine was pulled from U.S. shelves as a result of the FDA’s decision that Cocaine was “illegally marketing their drink as an alternative to street drugs”. Redux Beverages began working on a new name for the product immediately. At the end of May, 2007, the Redux team decided to change the name to “No Name:” energy drink, with the new can label featuring a large blank space for fans to write their chosen name for the drink, covering the “Cocaine” on the can itself. On June 17th, 2007, the drink was redistributed in the U.S. under the new labelling.
However, Redux Beverages has recently announced that the drink will return to shelves under its original name early 2008. Cocaine’s founder and senior partner, Jamey Kirby, always believed they would get their name back. Said Kirby in June 2007, “Oh, we’ll get our name back. We’ll get it back.”
The drink is now available online at www.drinkcocaine.com or in local beverage stores around the U.S.
The beverage is also available in Europe, where it is still sold as Cocaine Energy Drink rather than Insert Name Here: as it is in the U.S.
Opium perfume? The name’s not so much a problem for the perfume by Yves Saint Laurent as the advertising, which caused outrage for being too sexually suggestive and likely to cause “serious or widespread offence”.
The Kitchen Sink, the hot dish and name-dropping blog by the delectable Alexandra Watkins, is where you’ll find the first 2008 inductees into the fantabulous Eat My Words Name Shame Hall of Fame™, including some repeat offenders. Each name is eligible to win the #1 Head Scratcher™ award at the end of the year. Alexandra invites naming aficionados to keep those nominations coming, and she’ll post more.
The American Dialect Society, the 118-year-old organization of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars, has chosen “subprime” as 2007’s Word of the Year, as reported recently on CNNmoney.com.
“‘Subprime’ has been around with bankers for awhile, but now everyone is talking about ’subprime,”‘ said Wayne Glowka, a spokesman for the group and a dean at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga. “It’s affecting all kinds of people in all kinds of places.”
In this YouTube video segment, a couple of Brits embark on an explanation of the so-called “subprime” situation in America.
“These hedge funds, as they’re called, which specialize in these debts, they all have very good names.”
Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a café named after you. It’s a funny old world, eh?
Popular Mechanics finds the weirdest products at the consumer electronics show, CES 2008.
What do you get when you mix a dangerous weapon with an MP3 player? Well, it’s not quite a humanitarian crisis so much as a case of gadget convergence straight out of The Onion. I mean, seriously, this thing’s called the iTaser.
Is this a hoax?
Go to www.itaser.com to see who makes this stunning fashion accessory.
Monday, April 28th, 2008 - 8:14am |
naming process + pop culture + powerful names + product names + what the...? |
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