In the Isle of Man you can buy bags of ‘fairy poo’ It’s chocolate for children.
Any others?
Mr. Brains Faggots (some sort of British sausage thingie) has my vote as a yuck producer.
mmm Brains Faggots.
In Japan we have “Creap” coffee whitener (I guess it’s a combination of Cream(y) Powder).
Somewhere around here, I have a box of low-grade mock Turkish Delight (a Polish import, if memory serves?)
The package says:
EMENA - Ratluk
Unfortunate, that.
We also have Pocari Sweat sports drinks and Collon chocolate cookies.
It’s everywhere in the US now, but for some reason we overlook the name.
Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies.
Funny product with a funny name: I’ve seen butt padding on sale here. Basically performs the function of a padded bra, but for flat behinds. The name? Sodo.
Mitsubishi Motors, as of last year, was making cars in Japan with the following names.
Legnum (must not be a lot of room in those)
Dingo (A dingo ran over my baby!)
Delica Space Gear (huh?)
TownBox (um… yeah)
Dion (the obvious celebrity tie-in strategy has thus far been ignored)
Toppo BJ (ok, now they’re just doing it on purpose)
You can also drive a Daihatsu Naked and the Mazda Bongo Friendee.
In Ireland there’s a pub called The Waters of Collon. I went in and on the menu they offered a Collon mixed grill. Mmmm.
Dublin slang for sandwich is “sambo”. It’s used without any racial connotations, but imagine my surprise when I saw billboards all over town for O’Brien’s Sandwiches that offered:
Honda was going to launch a model called Fitta but when the Japanese were told that in Scandinavian (at least in Swedish) the word means the naughtiest part of the female anatomy they decided to call it Jazz instead.
Bimbo bread.
Problems with Foreign Product Names - I think this is funny, even if not all are true…
You forgot the Mazda Laputa.
The drink Calpis, although having an interesting origin has an unfortunate last syllable.
There’s the clothing brand Comme ça du mode, a meaningless string of French words.
Considering its name, there’s a surprising mild pop music magazine called Barfout.
And of course, foreigners who can read Japanese usually get a good laugh out of the phonetic transliteration of City Bank: Shiti Banku.
And on the topic of sandwiches, in Japan, the word is often shortened sando, which sounds just find. Unfortunately, some people think it’s okay to spell that sand in English. So you end up with “Delicious egg sand”. Which is only marginally better than the “Fresh mush” sign I saw the other day. (Mush = mushroom)
There’s a brand of Teddy Grahams knockoffs sold at the Dollar Tree called “Huggy Bears.” Unfortunately they look like regular bears and are lacking platform shoes and fur fedoras.
“Kinkos” the copy center always gives me a chuckle. It puts me in the mind of the song “Kinko, Kinko, the kid-loving clown – once the parents find me out, they run me out of town.”
There’s a canned coffee drink made in Taiwan called Hello Boss. (It’s comparable to Starbucks’ canned Frappuccino but it tastes better and it’s about a third of the price.)
And there’s Meltykiss candies (made by Meiji, I think) - delicious, fudge-like squares that are like a bite of heaven.
About 20 years ago in the US there was a diet supplement for bodybuilders called “Gorilla Balls”. The package had an cartoonish gorilla lifting weights.
I’ve always been amused by the home pregnancy test called Confirm. Mostly because that’s not the test I’d choose if I were in the market. I’d buy the one called “No, Of COURSE You’re Not Pregnant!”
And continuing on the subject of pregnancy-related product names, a friend of mine recently discovered that the brand name of the Morning After Pill is Plan B. I still kinda snicker every time I think of it.
I always loved the Czech car called the “Skoda”. A truly awful product name that we bastardized to “Skroda”.
in Israel, there is a brand of toilet paper called “TUSHY”
on topic -naughty food names
Highjack
Draelin - the bigger market for at home pregnancy tests are women dealing with infertility who DO want to be pregnant - they buy them closer to every month for months or years at a time. They are the more regular customers who will actually try enough to develop a brand preference, rather than your occassional buyer who is hoping not to be pregnant and just had a bad month. Confirm is a very good name, actually. Maybe not for you, but for the bigger piece of their market.
End Hijack
Pssshit! Enjoyed it while I was in France years ago. Do they still make it?