The Top 22 Popular Brand Names You're Saying Wrong

A trademark is a rule that says one company can not use the names of products, services, logos, symbols or catchphrases of another company. They're put in place so we, the ever consuming horde (I'm looking at you, lady who pepper sprayed her war through a K-Mart for black Friday deals), will not confuse one companies product with, the possibly, crappy version another.

And the fact that a trademark could be worth billions of dollars is just coincidental (Just go with it okay). What companies really care about is making sure we get the quality and performance we associate with their brand.

Imagine if every high fructose, vanilla, and carbonated water mix was called Coke. That would be a scary world to live in. Except for reading the label, we would have no idea what we're drinking.

 So companies with deep pockets and a lot to lose will go to great extents to protect their trademarks (Release the hounds! and by "hounds" I mean lawyers). They spend millions of dollars to let you know that, that thing you like to eat, drink, or drive? Yeah, that's our thing and it's the best high quality thing.

And they do a great job at it, in fact, they do such a great job at it, that it backfires on them. The product is so well advertised, so well trademarked it goes - cue record scratch - generic. That means it literally starts being a stand in for a generic version of the same product.

You would be surprised at how many times this happens. Here's a list of 22 popular trademarks that have suffered the generic curse.

1.  Invented in 1921 Band-Aid, owned by Johnson & Johnson, quickly became the catch all for any adhesive bandage.

 
2. Smith & Wesson was the first to own Breathalyser - the company that made the gadget that measures alcohol content. Now, anytime someone sticks a tube in your mouth and tells you to blow, they call it a breathalyser (Unless, You know, It's not).

3. Brillo has been around for at least 100 years now. So, instead of asking the guy at the .99 store where you can find a 'scouring pad'; you just say, "Yo, where the Brillo?" At least that's what I say.

4. Clorox maybe 'bleach', but not all bleach is Clorox. Most people don't care what it's called, as long it gets the pit stains out of their white tees.

5. Quick, if I handed you a run of the mill lip balm that wasn't Chap Stick would you care?

6. Unless you bake a lot of pies (and quite frankly, who doesn't?) you would be forgiven for not knowing that Cool Whip, is just a brand of desert topping, not the desert topping itself.

7. I once bought a "drain opener" that I thought was the long form name for Drano. Needless to say, my tub was still clogged after using it. That, my friends, is what trademarks are for.

8. The Wham-O toy company owns the right to the Frisbee name. If you call your flying disk the same name, they will sue you. You've been warned.

9. The Hi-Liter, being born in 1962,  is pretty young to be an icon for all color markers. It feels like it was just yesterday the Avery Dennison Corporation invented and trademarked it. 



 

10. Who would have thought that a company named Jacuzzi would pioneer a whirlpool bathtub and spa, with massaging jets, that would change the face of sleazy reality shows forever? Now their name is synonymous with hot tub.
  

11. Kraft Foods probably doesn't like that every gelatin dessert in the world is called Jell-O. I mean really, What would you rather eat? Gelatin pudding, or Jell-O?

12. The generic name for fast acting adhesive is Cyanoacrylate. Nobody was going to go around asking for Cyanoacrylate. So we pay a little extra to call it something we all can pronounce - Krazy Glue.

13. Mace Security International, Inc. came into prominence in the early '90s when it started making its premiere product - pepper spray. It was aggressively marketed as a non lethal, legal option for self defense; Its popularity grew so much that people identified the spray with the company name.

14. There was a time where everything that sopped up your babies messy bottom was called Pampers. After 60 years you don't really hear that anymore. But you probably can smell it.

15. Calling table tennis Ping-Pong, is like calling basketball Spalding. They make the tools for the game, but they are not the game.

16. When Minneapolis based, Innovative Sports was sold in the early 80's the companies name was changed to Rollerblade. Since 1983 all in line skates have been falsely referred to by that name, no matter who the manufacturer is.

17. Polytetrafluoroethylene (I'll give you a second), is considered to be the most slippery substance known to man. DuPont applied it to pots and pans and marketed it as Teflon. Other companies make non-stick cookware; to DuPonts chagrin, we all call those Teflon too.

18. The misuse of this one is understandable. Vaseline sounds like a technical name for petroleum jelly. Yet, as you can guess from its inclusion on this list, it's not.  Interestingly enough, the inventor of petroleum jelly, Robert Chesebrough, was the first to market it under the name Vaseline.

19. Windex has been around since 1933. That is a lot of clean glass. The popularity of Windex - trademarked by S.C. Johnson - led to the generic use of the name for similar window cleaners under different brands.

20.  BIC keeps a tight hold on the "Wite-Out" name and still produces products under it. That doesn't stop everybody else from calling other correction fluids by the same name.

21. Xerox is the prototypical example of a rogue trademark. It started off as the leader in the photo copy field, saturated the consciousness of the public, and got co-opted to mean photo copy.

22. Finally, Ziploc is just one of those brands whose name says it all. You zip it, to lock it. There is no room to remember all the names of  other reusable, resealable zipper storage bags.