Category: wonderings

Supermarket finds: Bi-products

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Would you like a delicious bi-product for breakfast?

Bi-Products.

Can someone tell me which marketing genius at Metro thought it would be a good idea to have a whole section of the supermarket prominently labelled “Bi-Products”? Besides seeming wrong on at least two levels, it manages to be both meaningless and off-putting. “Yogurt” is pretty clear. But “Bi-Products”? I thought maybe I was missing some obvious marketing push, but a Google search for “Bi-products” just brings up a lot of what you’d expect, including a site offering buffalo skulls (green or boiled), jaw bones, or feet, all “bi-products” of buffalo ranching. Oh, and a lot of fluff about business intelligence, too.

In a food world where “by-product” generally means “stuff that we’d normally throw away because it’s disgusting and inedible, but we found a way to grind it up and sell it to you anyway,” why does Metro think that “Bi-Products” is a good label for premium yogourt?

Who you gonna call?

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Fixer on the Roof, sealed with a fix

Lots of businesses can boast clever puns in their names, but few can lay claim to one in their name and a second completely different pun in their slogan. Hello, Fixer on the Roof.

The eternal question about businesses bearing cutesy names is whether you really want to trust your house, car, or life to the person who thinks up these groaners. But that hasn’t stopped me from vowing to call up Bin There Dump That if I ever need a  dumpster, nor did it stop me from calling in the SWAT team (Specialized Wildlife Apprehension Technicians, whose website features the cutest damn illustration of a raccoon in jail that you’ve ever seen) to evict a family of squirrels from the spare bedroom last year, nor did it make my fireplace service choice between Friendly Fires and Burning Sensations any easier.  But trusting my roof to a mad punner? I’m not sure if I’m ready for that.

What a bargain

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Free offer from Direct Energy

I’m used to receiving “free” offers in the mail, but rarely is a company—especially one as large as Direct Energy—as upfront about just how much free is going to cost me. I’m not even sure why they bothered putting the asterisk there; it seems pretty clear even from the large print that I’d have to be pretty daft to take advantage of this offer.

Bonus: I have no idea what Bucknuts are or how they allow Direct Energy to offer “competitive energy solutions.” They really don’t sound like something I’d want to burn for heat in the winter.

Ininflammable, llama-resistant gloves

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welding-gloves-ininflammable

It’s bad enough that in English, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing, but I didn’t realize that the same is also true in French. I always hear that English is such a flexible language, so I’d like to begin a campaign to borrow the French term for something that won’t burn, the wonderfully elegant ininflammable, as seen on the tag for these welding gloves. Furthermore, I think we should encourage more constructions like this: ininvaluable, ininhabitable, inintense, the possibilities are ininnumerable.

welding-gloves-llama-resistant

If I could only read the Spanish text for these welding gloves, I’d come away thinking that Kevlar makes them good for handling llamas. I suppose I’ll have to look elsewhere to satisfy my steer-wrangling welding glove requirements.

The death of logos #2

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The Humphrey monument just outside the Mount Pleasant Mausoleum is instantly recognizable to anyone who travels past the Humphrey Funeral Home on Bayview just outside Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Humphrey family monument in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

The Humphrey Funeral Home

The Humphrey monument is just a few steps away from the Weston monument previously featured in this space, and only about 2 km away from the funeral home.

The death of logos is an occasional series that looks at logos or wordmarks of organizations that appear on cemetery monuments.

Do you wanna go faster?

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Polar Express, CNE 2009

It’s really hard to take a picture while the Polar Express cranks up to top speed and whips you backwards around the track. Holding your arm out in the universal self-portrait position, you can only hope to capture atmosphere; to hell with niceties like focus, exposure, and composition.

A day at the Ex capped with a nighttime ride on the Polar Express marks the unofficial end to summer. It just wouldn’t be the same without it.

Do I want to go faster? Damn right. Crank it.