Kickapoo Joy Juice’s early advertising campaign was very similar to Mountain Dew’s of the time – using characters from Li’l Abner to create and market a hillbilly feeling.[13] Although the product is distributed largely in Asian markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia and Bangladesh), the can still comes decorated with a vintage Li’l Abner drawing.[14]
Years ago, the National Lampoon produced a parody of a Sunday newspaper: the “Dacron Republican-Democrat.” (Its motto was “One of America’s Newspapers”)
There was a full color advertising insert for Swill Mart, whose store brand was Nonamo. (No name-O”
Acme was the name of the supermarket we had right downtown (not to mention one of the two anchors of the circa 1960 shopping mall nearby). Yet Acme market never sold any of the cool stuff like Volcano Pills or Rocket-Powered Roller Skates.
Apparently they’re still around, but not in the two locations near where I grew up
Acme products, by the way, were being used in Warner Brothers cartoons long before Chuck Jones created his Roadrunner cartoon series. There are entire websites listing the products and which cartoons they appeared in
Futurama is full of great fake products, the best part of which are usually the slogans:
Big Pink Gum: “Breath as fresh as a summer ham.” Stop-and-Drop Suicide Booth: “America’s favourite suicide booth since 2008”. Molten Boron: “Nobody doesn’t like Molten Boron!” Bachelor Chow: “Now with flavor!” Glagnar’s Human Rinds: “It’s a buncha muncha cruncha human!” It Sure Ain’t Butter! Slurm: “It’s highly addictive!” LöBrau Beer π-in-1 Oil: 3.14159 oils combined into 1. Mobil Dick Whale Oil Minimum Obligations Manual: the Planet Express employee handbook.
Exactly. I haven’t seen generic products like that since the 1980s, but at one time there were generic products that were truly generic, as in no brand name at all. Like a 2 liter bottle with a plain white label that just said “Cola”. It seems like those products have all been replaced with store brands or private label brands.
Late 70s, kids in “the projects” (Cabrini Green, but probably others as well) would diss each other with "Well, you, you’re… generic."
We figured their moms would bring home bags of white products with big black type instead of the name brand stuff the kids wanted. So those generics became a symbol of boring and disappointing.
