Sunday, October 04, 2009

Eye-Opening Baby Product Semantics

Yesterday I spent an hour or so at Babies “R” Us with my sister. Having not frequented this store, I seized the opportunity to look around. Two particular items grabbed my attention. Because I felt inappropriate walking around the store with my camera, I will have to do my best to describe them here.

First item... I strolled past the baby food aisle and perused the various baby food flavors. Banana flavor made sense. I saw prune flavor and wondered whether regular babies needed it. Then a third flavor caught my eye. In the same font as “Banana” and “Prune” were written on the other jars, it said “Brain and Eye.” In a smaller font, it also said “Development.” So while this line of baby food apparently helps to develop baby’s brains and eyes, my mind immediately drifted to a land where eating brains and eyes of animals isn’t so out of the norm. For a fleeting moment, although baby food flavored like brains and eyes seemed a little odd, it actually struck me as plausible.

Second item... Then I discovered a toilet paper aisle. One of the brands was “Seventh Generation,” named after an Iroquois proverb. Nevertheless, I thought “Seventh Generation Toilet Paper” was an unfortunate combination.

1 comment:

Jed Carosaari said...

Reminds me of the real story where an American company was giving food in jars to folks in Sub-Saharan Africa, and they got used to the idea that the picture of the food would be on the outside of the jar. Then one day the American company delivered baby food, with of course babies on the outside.

They were not big sellers.