ice box (was: obsolescene [was church key])

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:29 AM -0500 3/1/05, sagehen wrote:
>  >But in the case of most of those brand names that become generics
>>(paronomasia, I think it's called), it's more the successful
>>marketing of the product itself that does it than the brand name,
>>however clever it may have been.  If Scotties had outpaced Kleenex,
>>or Pepsi Coke, we'd be calling tissues scotties and soft drinks pepsi
>>(in some places), I dare say.  Or "curad" as opposed to "band-aid".
>  >
>>Larry
>~~~~~~~~~~
>I take your point.  It might be interesting to compare the advertising
>budgets of these competing products.  I do think /kleenex/ has an intrinsic
>advantage over /scotties/ or /puffs/, in that it only meant one thing, and
>its sheer ugliness to eye & ear make it memorable.
>I can easily imagine (without prejudice, since I've always loathed both)
>/pepsi/ beating out /coke/ if they'd come on the market at the same time.
>/Curad/ might have won, with a head start, but /bandaid/ is such a beaut,
>that looks doubtful to me.
>AM
>
Re "kleenex":  wasn't there a study on the effectiveness of "x" and
"k" (or at least [k]) in denoting "modernness" in product names that
came out during the post-WWII period?  There certainly were a bunch
of them, including the aforementioned "xerox", "clorox" (with a [k]),
and "Kodak", even if the latter didn't make it to generic status.  I
think there were other examples, although I can't dredge them up at
the moment.  I think "scotch-tape" also had the right phonology for
success, although it lacked the non-ambiguity you point out as an
asset for "kleenex" (and "xerox").  As to ugliness, "kleenex" is a
little like all those box buildings ("international style") that were
so popular during the same period, isn't it?

Larry