Advertisers Come Up With The Stupidest Things
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Big cars, cartoons and machines are ridiculed for not taking enough time to give them a sensible name.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell so sweet.
Romeo and Juliet (II,ii,1-2)
Shakespeare, through the voice of Juliet asks one of the great philosophical questions of our time. What is in a name? Sadly, Juliet was young and naïve and didn’t have the benefit of modern advertising to show her the error of her ways. Had she seen some of these examples she might have realised a name is important, and careless naming can make a big impact for the wrong reasons.
Stupid Cartoon Character Names
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Thundercats in the 80s as much as everybody else. The incredibly catchy rock theme tune, the repetitive catchphrase which had kids shouting HOOOOOOOO! at the top of their voice all over the world, the awesome Sword of Omens, what was there not to like?
Well the unoriginal character names for one. Ever wondered why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has had such longevity, whilst Thundercats is a relic of its time? It’s all in the names.
The turtles were named after great artists, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. The Thundercats were named after, well cats. Liono is a lion, Tigra is Tiger, Panthro is a Panther. Think of a member of the cat family and bingo you have a Thundercat, no need to explain the origins of Cheetara and Jagar.
In the single laziest character naming session ever, the creators doomed Thundercats to being a fad rather than a lasting legacy of kids’ TV.
Stupid Car Names
Let’s be honest, the success of a car can be decided by the name alone. Even if you’ve never seen an Aston Martin Vanquish, the car sounds like a sleek and sexy vehicle which can conquer and subdue even the most deadly of roads.
What then were the creative bods at Daihatsu thinking when they came up with the brainwave of the Charade? The geniuses had created a car and branded it with a name which was synonymous with blatant pretence and deception.
Drivers must have wondered when the deception would be revealed. That thing you thought was an engine – actually it’s an amalgamation of cheese and sawdust! How confident would you feel driving a car which is only pretending to be a car? The name was a disaster, as was the car.
Stupid Scientific Names
Scientists are methodical in their approach and tend towards the scientific rather than the artistic. They could be forgiven then for coming up with some pretty boring names that stick to practicality rather than descriptive flair.
It is difficult to believe however, that some of the world’s smartest minds didn’t see the fatal error in calling the world’s most expensive scientific catapult the Large Hadron Collider. Even those of us who don’t get juvenile pleasure from rude sounding words could easily misread “Hadron” as “Hard-on”.
For some the resultant tittering and chortling is difficult to avoid.
What are the scientists left with? A ?7 billion machine which will go down in history as the biggest hard-on in the world, that may possibly create a black hole over Switzerland. To add insult to injury, the Hadron isn’t working properly, prompting yet more jokes about the premature ejaculation of particles and flaccid results.
Surely they must have seen this coming?
