Our supermarket has a load of products called “No name”. They all come in the same yellow package. That generic enough? This is a Canadian chain called Provigo (in Quebec; I think they are Loblaw’s outside).
“No Name” may well get you to a generic, simply because you may find it very hard to register that as a trade name. “No Name” itself is rather generic, and may well be regarded as an invalid trade name. So anyone could reasonably use it on a package, and the product could reasonably be considered as an in-store generic.
However, basics, I’m not sure are ever anything but generics. Even branded sugar or flour is still a generic product. It is still sugar or flour. The obvious well known generic is aspirin. It was once a trademarked (and initially patented) product. Bayer famously were stripped of it, and aspirin is now a generic. Even if you have a branding on the packet, that aspirin is still a generic.
By the same logic, Cola is a generic, even if branded. What isn’t a generic is CocaCola or Pepsi. You can’t sell a No-Name bottle of cola labelled CocaCola. But anyone can sell Cola. Just as anyone can sell Aspirin.
If you sell cola with a trademarked name, and a formulation that tries to set it apart in taste, it arguably isn’t a generic anymore.
Some of the older comic book geeks among us may recall that in 1984, Marvel released something called Generic Comic Book, whose cover deliberately mimicked the black-print-on-white-packaging generic products of the time.
As I recall, even the credits were generic. E.g., “Written by a writer. Drawn by an artist.” Etc. It was (I think) intended as a joke.
What was the distinction between house brand and generics anyway? I mean as a child, the line between “Food Club” and the stuff in the white cans and boxes seemed razor-thin even then.
Nowadays, nothing is quite so stark as the old white/black printing, but it’s still there as the down-market house brands (as opposed to the mid/high end ones like “Private Selection”)
Your memory is pretty good. Just for laughs, I googled “marvel generic comic book”, and couldn’t believe how many hits I got. This one is particularly good.
Winn-Dixie is still going strong within their region (US Southeast) although the parent company is now called SE Grocers.
Chek is still their house brand of soda. Their flavored fizzy water is indistinguishable from, e.g. La Croix at 40% the price.
Back in the short period when truly generic goods were sold, I bought a can of generic cat food. It had a white label with a green stripe and text that read “Cat Food.”
Our cats at the time were fond of a canned food called Kozy Kitten. It looked and smelled like ground up fish heads and was cheaper than the other brands. Well, since they liked Kozy Kitten, I figured they might like the generic food, which was even cheaper than KK.
When I put their dishes with the generic food in front of them, they sniffed it and, in unison, turned their backs to it and started scratching the mat with their rear paws as if to cover it up. Saying of course as plain as day, “This stuff is shit.”
oldoaktree beat me to a Repo Man link, but I think this one is funnier - look carefully at what Otto takes out of the fridge.
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that with true generics, you have no guarantee of quality or consistency.
Whereas, you can usually count on getting the same thing each time you buy a particular store’s house brand.
And a store is motivated to offer a certain level of quality in their house brands because that will motivate at least some shoppers to shop there instead of at their competitors. Although the quality and popularity of house brands seems to be higher nowadays than back in the heyday of true generics.
It was a marketing gimmick. It caught on during a brief spurt of high inflation in food prices. Once the spurt receded (not that prices went down, but that they went up at a more normal, acceptable rate that folks got used to), the gimmick lost its lustre.
I also suspect a lot of the “creativity” in reducing package sizes to disguise inflation and still hit a price point took off as the plain label generics were fading. Same deception delivered by a different means.
Sure, but ultimately it was just a less expensive house brand, which was marketed as cheaper primarily through the use of very sparse graphics- black and white text only, for example. Presumably this was to signal that they weren’t spending a lot on packaging and making the product in the package as cheap as possible.
I mean what else was the point, if not to signify ultra-cheap house brand through really sparse packaging? (“no marketing costs whatsoever! This is as cheap as we can make it!”)
For a while during the toilet paper shortage last year, this generic toilet paper was the only toilet paper on the shelf at Walmart. I had never noticed it before, which doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, but it never caught my eye. It’s still on the shelf now. Robot or human?
@oldoaktree mentioned that the plain packaging carries a bit of a stigma, so that was likely a factor in sales. Even at the checkout line it can be a little embarrassing. “Our health plan only covers one kind of replacement shell.”
I don’t know if this was the case with those true generics in the past, but today the equivalent “value” house brands may have the cheapest sticker price even if they aren’t the cheapest per unit. So anyone who does a little math realizes they’re not the value they purport to be. That single roll of “value” paper towels may be $1.29 but the 2-pack of “normal store brand” quilted, top-absorbing, select-a-size towels is $2.29 for a much better per-roll or per-sheet price (there may even be more sheets per roll).
I also wonder how modern digital printing and computer graphic design plays a part in the disappearance of black & white generics. Multi-color printing isn’t as expensive as it used to be, though I’m curious how much of it is still done as process color versus digital. Same for the graphic design, so there may not be much to save by skimping on those things.
I think that’s a big part of how things have changed. Used to be that you bought 1 lb cans of coffee (for example), and you had name-brands, house brands and generic. Now the package sizes vary, although apparently not as clearly as you might think- some brands and types within brands come in 12 oz, 11.5 oz, 11.3 oz, 10.8 oz and 10.5 oz.
So if they’re all (name brands are just as guilty as house brands) changing their package size to conform to a certain price point for a specific product, there’s not so much pressure to signify that the consumer is getting value through deliberately making the product look cheap.