Gentlemebn, I’ve been through this, and nothing new has come up – you’tre all repeating me or stuff I’ve come across already.
I know that Dow has been defending their styrofoam name for legal reasons. My point is that they could easily change the name to something else – Snozberry, if they wanted, or GORFLAM, or something else, and not care that everyone in the world called expanded polystyrene beads “styrofoam”. You could say that they were there first (although, as I’ve said above, I wonder if that is indeed true), but surely it’s cheaper to change the name and not worry about the public perception. Cheaper, too.
And, again, the basic question is WHY DID THIS NOt-CLOSELY-RELATED MATERIAL END UP WITH THE SAME NAME?
Isn’t that terrible…I’ve seen those craft items and would never have referred to them as Styrofoam, because they have a different consistency from the “Styrofoam” coffee cups. Just the situation Dow would be upset by.
Well, I’m not about to drive down to A.C. Moore just to check out the genuine STYROFOAM™ Brand craft products. My guess is that they’re quite similar to someone not familiar with the difference between molded expanded polystyrene, extruded polystyrene, or thin extruded polystyrene sheets.
Because, to the lay user, they *are *closely related. This soft not-plastic, not-metal, not-wood stuff that I can dent with my fingernail in my wall that has STYROFOAM stamped on it looks and feels close enough to this stuff my disposable coffee cup is made out of. Certainly I don’t have a better name for it - Expanded Polystyrene Beads just ain’t sexy, and it’s way too many syllables for most of us to remember. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, but never attribute stupidity to that which can be explained by laziness.
Most cans aren’t made of tin either, but lots of people still call aluminum cans “tin cans”. The to-go containers at the salad bar at Whole Foods aren’t plastic, they’re made of cornstarch, but they look and feel like plastic, so we still call them plastic containers. (Actually, I’m not certain of that one - is “plastic” a wide enough term that the cornstarch is turned into a plastic?) Packing peanuts - not made from peanuts, actually. 
My dad worked for J&J, holder of the Band-Aid trademark. When we were kids, we used to taunt him by asking for a band…age, or to make a Xero…graphic copy just to watch him turn red.
Nope, you’re right. I had something else in mind when I made that comment. Sorry.
Food containers made from cornstarch??? I had no idea.
Yep! They’re hard to find retail, but Whole Foods by me will sell them to me at the regular per pound salad bar rate. I use them when packing food for camping so I can just bury 'em with the compost.
ETA: Just, uh…don’t try to use them in the microwave. They melt really quickly.
There are also these opaque food containers made from sugarcane. I’ve probably encountered these and thought that they were made from polystyrene. I would probably have called them styrofoam, quite unaware that they were not made out of STYROFOAM™ Brand foam from Dow®.
Yeah, and the Kleenex people could just change the name and give up too.
Are they not closely related materials? Aren’t they both polystyrene? Doesn’t the “styro” in “styrofoam” come from polystyrene ?
Cal, it’s possible that the two terms, Styrofoam for Dow and styrofoam for cups, came about independently but for basically the same reasons. It’s not surprising that “polystyrene foam” was strung together as “styrofoam”, no matter whether it was an ad agency pitchman or a shopper on the picnic aisle.
But it’s NOT similar. Dow’s Styrofoam doesn’t have that beaded texture of “stryrofoam” cups. It isn’t all that similar. There are lots of similar soft plastics. Howcum the soft plastic expanded beaded stuff ended up with the same name?
Yeah, but I contend most people wouldn’t know tthat unless yopu told them. The Expanded Plastic Bead stuff could’ve been called “Beadite” or “Softinsul” or any of a million names. “Styrofoam” wasn’t inevitable, and most people don’t know a damn about chemical strcuture. Somebody “pushed” that “styrofoam” name.
Why not? It would save a bundle in legal costs. But whatever they chose as an alternative would probably follow them.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE WITH STYROFOAM. Nobody feels compelled to call Tyvek “Saran Wrap”, even though they’re both sheets of plastic. Insulating TRUE Stryofom has very different feel and mechanical features than Expanded Styrene Beads. NOBODY would elect to call it “Styrofoam” just because it’s plastic. In the case of Kleenex and aspirin and Cellophane and Zipper, all of those manufacturers have a vested interest in retainin the name. But everyone not in the building or insulation trade ALREADY associates “Styrofoam” with a low-cost, low-strength cheap beaded ,material. They could abandon the name (and re-educate their insulation customers) for a pittance. Why not do so? My daughter already thinks of “Styrofoam” as the cheap, weak, squeaky stuff from Styrofoam cups and styrofoam ice chests and from The Fairly Oddparents (“It’s the Syrofoam Anniversary!” announces Cosmo, wrong as usual, and breaking his “styrofoam” suit.)
So why hang onto a name 90% of people associate with something else (which is NOT the same thing) and take on the hassle of constantly correcting everyone and working at not losing the trademark? Tell the builders you’re using new GORFAM insulation. Who the hell would know, or care? And you can put your lawyers onto something useful. Or at least malicious.
You really should check out the NON-INSULATING STYROFOAM™ made by Dow.
ETA: I’m sure you could use it for insulating, but that’s not the purpose for which it is sold by Dow. [Did I mention that Dow calls it STYROFOAM?]
I think you are seriously overestimating the cost of writing disclaimers, and seriously underestimating the impact of abandoning a brand name like Styrofoam. The actual out of pocket cost of re-designing the brand can be in the millions, even without a re-education campaign, and the impact to your revenues can be much higher than that, as the vultures come down on Styrofoam and use the name to sell directly competing products.
The result would be that people who don’t buy Styrofoam products will now associate the word with the right material, and people who do buy Styrofoam products will now associate the word with the wrong material, and have to be educated about the new brand name.
Because the Styrofoam brand name is worth literally millions. Much more than the cost of continuing to legally enforce the brand name.
I’ve never seen true Styrofoam that I know of, and had no idea that it would be different than styrofoam (little “s”) cups. From the name, I’d guess “foam” and some type of styrene, and not being a materials engineer the things that cups and cheap coolers are made of fits the bill.
So, where can I actually see some real (big “S”) Styrofoam?
As Dow constantly asserts, it’s used as an insulating material. Punch some holes in your walls and if you see some Blue™ insulating material, that’s STYROFOAM™.
Me, I’ll stick to a coffee cup.
Heck, I’m 41, and I was calling the cup stuff “Styrofoam” for more than two decades before I ever saw true Styrofoam. And I didn’t even see the Styrofoam insulation for the first time in an actual insulation context. I worked for an outfit that packaged and shipped various items for the general public (“package consolidator” is what I think that type of business is called), and we cut the Styrofoam insulation sheets to size to form protective walls inside the cardboard boxes when packing large, fragile items for shipping.
And speaking of packaging, “packing peanuts” or “Styrofoam peanuts” is kind of out of date at this point. Sure, they were shaped like peanuts originally, but nowadays they’re more S-shaped. But they’re still called peanuts, even by the manufacturers, I believe. And, like those to-go boxes somebody mentioned, they’re often made from cornstarch now.
Kleenex vs. tissue? I always say “tissue”, even though I usually buy the Kleenex brand (I like the 3-ply variety, because I don’t blow holes through it when blowing my nose). I think I do this because of that one smartass in my 11th-grade English class who, one day when he had a runny nose, pointed to the box of Kleenex on the teacher’s desk and asked, “May I have a tissue, please?”
Searching the Canadian trademark (sorry, that’s trade-mark) database, I find trade-mark UCA38082 for STYROFOAM registered to DOW CHEMICAL OF CANADA LIMITED in 1950:
This appears to correspond to the American trademark posted by Squink for IRREGULAR SOLID MASSES OF MULTICELLULAR EXPANDED SYNTHETIC RESINOUS MATERIAL [ AND GRANULAR MASSES OF THE SAME MATERIAL COMMINUTED ], granted at about the same time.
Note that both trademarks pertain to expanded, not extruded, material. The Canadian trademark (sorry, trade-mark) has a bit more detail: it refers to such non-insulating uses as “packing and packaging materials of plastic foam” as well as “trays and dishes”!
I suspect that Dow Chemical is trying to pull a fast one on us. They invented both expanded and extruded polystyrene foams, and got the trademark STYROFOAM for both. To their dismay, the term became genericized to the expanded polystyrene cups, packing material, etc made by every two-bit company. They were not quick enough to realistically defend their trademark there, although I note that they still appear to maintain the trademark registration. In the field of building insulating material made of extruded polystyrene foam, however, they could still maintain some reasonable control over the trademark. They want to pretend that STYROFOAM was never applied to such base products as coffee cups.
One final note: There’s no chemical reason why extruded polystyrene must be blue. That’s just their way of ensuring that you’ve got genuine STYROFOAM™ Brand Insulation. Owens Corning make FOAMULAR® insulation, which also extruded polystyrene foam, but pink in color.
Were cups ever manufactured from Styrofoam?
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Because the Styrofoam brand name is worth literally millions. Much more than the cost of continuing to legally enforce the brand name.
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Easy to say, but I dpon’t believe it. Companies have abandoned product lines before, and have changed names of products before. It can be done easily and gradually and without much pain, and would completely eliminate the confusion.
My guess is that it’s simply not worth the trouble and any POTENTIAL risk. Managers are conservative types. Who the hell wants to take a chance on something that, however nlikely to cause a drop in sales, actually did so?
It’s irrelevant, in any case. It’s not my question – my question was how the confusion arose in the first place. Again, I maintain this was NOT a natural and inevitable development. I think Terminus has taken us a long way to the answer. it seems as if it might me Dow’s own fault for using the same tradematrk for two very differently manufactured products that started from the same base.
That’s not his point. He’s just trying a more emphatic example.
Like what if Kleenex’s never made faical tissues, but their actual product was, and had always been, a cotton rag – not a thin paper facial tissue?
If “Kleenex” = “cotton rag”, then how the heck did “thin paper facial tissues” become whidely known and accepted as “kleenex”?
I would guess that Dow has several other related products that fall under the brand of “Styrofoam”. For example, Lego isn’t just interlocking little bricks, you can also get little Lego men, Lego vehicles etc.
There must have been some product that used their Styrofoam material in some way for which most other manufactueres were using the “foam cup material”.
Like maybe floatation devices for the navy or something. Toss the big, white, life saver ring out to your drowning buddy. Hope the inside of it is Styrofoam because that’s the best. It’s lighter and floats better than “foam cup material”. You’ve broken those older ones open before and there was always white foamy stuff inside, so you assume the Styrofoam-made floatation devices have a new-and-improved white stuff inside.
Or something. I assume I’m way off, but there has to be some common product that in the past used white foam and later Styrofoam, but people still think of the original.