6 Questionable Advertising Icons

Sometime if you stop to look at what is really around you, you notice things you never saw before.  These are my thoughts on six advertisements that caused me to think after further inspection:

1. BLACK ANGUS

This is great company name from a trademark standpoint (I am a trademark attorney after all). This name conjures up the impression of the high quality meat that you will find at at top line American steak house.  But there is a major flaw here.  That has to be the single most important "G" in all of marketing!  Talk about absolute opposite impression if that "G" disappears.  If I owned one of these franchises, I would buy the lights for my letter "G" in bulk. Because the impression you want to give your customers in this:

 Not this one:

Yep, like I said that is one "muy importante" letter.  ("Hey boss why is the restaurant so empty tonight?")

2. ARGO CORNSTARCH

Whenever I see the box of my favorite thickening agent, I can only think of the utter horror of this woman's husband on their honeymoon night.  "Come here honey and take off that sexy green robe..... WHAT THE *$%#?!?!"  How do you spell A-N-N-U-L-M-E-N-T?"  On the other hand, if he really loves her, he might just cancel that bottle of bubbly being brought up by room-service and order up a tub of butter, a salt shaker, and a boat load of napkins.  I guess now he knows why they were snickering when they said she had a heart of gold.

3.  TUNA FISH
Why are tuna company's trying to pull the switcharo on us and pretend that it isn't fish?  What does a Bumble Bee have to do with tuna?  They don't swim; they fly.  We don't eat them; we eat what they make.  Tuna just makes fish poo, and we don't eat that do we?  Bees simply have nothing to do with fish whatsoever.  So what's with the Bumble Bee name.

Same with Chicken of the Sea.  It really isn't chicken.  In fact it is one of the few things that doesn't taste like chicken.  I think bbq iguana tastes more like chicken than tuna.  And where does the mermaid come in?  Is half-sentient being cannibalism what we are going for here?  Perhaps they should have adopted some kind of hybrid mammal-foul-fish meat mascot instead?

4. MRS. BUTTERWORTH'S

So I understand the "back-to-grandma's house" motif we are going for here.  Still, is this best captured by deluging your flapjack in cranial fluid?  You did just dump the contents of someone head onto your breakfast.  Uck.  Not not mention the sensitivity training you'll be undoubted assigned to attend after you manhandle some elderly lady.  Just say'n.

5. UNCLE BEN'S, AUNT JEMIMA, AND CREAM OF WHEAT
I have always wondered, does the KKK just not eat these foods?  Is there something about a smiling black person on the box that would make it difficult for such a racist to consume there contents (and can you even eat while wearing one of those white hoods)?  Or do these marketing icons conjure up nostalgia for the servitude blacks of the old south.  Frankly, wouldn't you trust any of these three to watch your kids?  Especially the Cream of Wheat guy.  He just looks so happy to have made a bowl of hydrated coarsely ground wheat.  I'd love to just hang with a guy that happy - cool hat and all.

6. TRIX
Is anyone else troubled by the nexus between a breakfast cereal that resembles bunny poo, a rabbit mascot, and a name that is an obvious misspelling of the word "tricks?"

Did someone, somewhere along the line dye some bunny droppings and feed them to his kid brother - and he liked it?  Perhaps it was Mikey from the Life cereal commercials?

I guess I did once color some Kix with crayons and fed them to my brother.  Can't say he noticed.  Maybe I should try rabbit poop next. I bet Crayola has those colors too.