I’m pretty sure my sister still has the GoldStar microwave she bought in college, 20-something years ago. Or at least she did the last time I visited. Which isn’t bad for something she selected mainly because it was the cheapest one the store had. The memorable thing about it was a poorly translated warning label that referred to it as a “mica-wave”.
Come to think of it, it’s kind of surprising that Samsung managed to completely turn their reputation around without changing their name. I remember when Samsung electronics’ main selling point was that they were cheaper than other brands.
The mainstream soda companies have had diet sodas sweetened with first saccharine and later aspartame for decades. And many people who drink that stuff enjoy the very distinctive way those sweeteners taste. Those buyers want that distinctly different, IMO highly chemical / artificial, taste.
Starting a few years ago, some genius at IIRC Coca Cola figured out how to make a sugarless low-cal soda that tasted almost identical to the regular sugary kind. But what to call it? “Diet Coke” was already taken. Pepsi quickly followed suit but what to call it? “Diet Pepsi” was already taken. They did not want to destroy the sales of the existing diet-tasting sodas.
They settled on “zero sugar” as the category name. Meaning it tastes almost like the sugarful version but doesn’t have any. Coke Zero and Pepsi Max are examples of zero sugar sodas.
As a diabetic who despises the flavors of artificial sweeteners, I find these products close enough to the real thing, but with negligible blood sugar consequences, to be a really neat invention.
At least for this category of buyer, it has nothing to do with calorie reduction, and everything to do with sugar reduction. With ~35 million diabetics in the USA, that’s a good-sized market. Many of whom aren’t all that interested in managing their weight, though maybe they should be. Me, I’m skinny.
A tri-tip is stupid expensive here in Arkansas and considerably cheaper in California. I can only find tri-tip at one of our smaller grocery chains, but I love it.
Yeah, I know somebody who as a child would never have consented to taste icky disgusting Brussels sprouts, but avidly consumed her mother’s delicious “baby cabbages”.
Technically, AIUI, the varieties of plum that are usually marketed as “dried plums” (large, round, often red-skinned, clingstone, Japanese origin, dried in cut halves) are different from the ones generally made into “prunes” (small, oval, dark-skinned, freestone, European origin, dried as whole fruits):
Not recently, at any rate. Nutria fur was well known under that name at least as early as the 1930s.
In fact, AFAICT, the original name most routinely used for this rodent in English-speaking North America beginning in the 19th century was “nutria”, from the Spanish name for otter. Spanish speakers prefer “coypu” so as not to confuse the rodent with the otter.
I know where they got it from: Nutria is the Spanish word for otter.
They are cute, I don’t want to eat them.
ETA:
That has me confused as a Spanish speaker, I guess you refer to South American Spanish. I have never heard the word coypu in Spain, I have no idea what it is. But I know what a capibara is, in case that is it. The biggest extant rodent. Much bigger than rabbits (those I do eat!). Will check on the net, just writing this down before the edit window closes.
ETA 2: Oh! They look like beavers and have been introduced in Germany and in Spain (but not in the parts I know). Mhhh… not sure I want to eat them.
My parents told me everything was ‘beef’, or I wouldn’t eat it. Same for gravy. It had to be beef gravy or I wouldn’t eat it, so she told me every gravy was ‘beef’ gravy. My kid brain just didn’t catch on that we couldn’t be having beef gravy with our chicken. I don’t think I caught on to it until I was in middle school, when she tried to pass off oysters as ‘beef’. I was shocked at the enormity of the lie. My sister was still teasing me about that when she was on her death bed.
In the Pennsylvania state medical marijuana program cannabis strains are renamed in an attempt to make them medically legitimate sounding. I’m currently medicating with “Durban” which used to be called “Durban Poison” but poison is not cool for a medicine name.
Likewise, “Green Crack” is rebranded “Green Kush”. Cheers!
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I’ve often said that I’d love to get the job naming strains. My favorite one was a cross of California Dream and Trainwreck: they called it Lindsay Lohan.
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