- You really should read your new product’s name out loud at least once before launching it.
A great name can do a lot for making your products successful. In the ideal scenario, your brand could even become the product’s common name — think about Kleenex, Q-Tips, or Hoover, which they call vacuum cleaners in England.
Not every product can have such a catchy name, though. In fact, sometimes you find things in stores with such unfortunate names that you can’t help but wonder what their marketing departments were thinking.
Here are 10 examples of products that probably should’ve been called something else.
10. Touch Dic
In 2005, South Korean software developer Daewon Media launched a Korean-English dictionary on the then-new Nintendo DS — for some reason. Due to the console’s groundbreaking touch control, they named their educational game Touch Dic.
Why are you laughing? “Dic” is short for “dictionary!”
Although the game was never released outside of South Korea, Daewon named its subsequent versions Touch Dictionary. Perhaps they should’ve played their own game for a bit before naming it.
9. Ford Pinto
There are more languages in the world than English and poor product name choices can happen in them as well. Take, for example, the Ford Pinto automobile.
The name’s pretty inoffensive — the car’s named after a horse, right? Yet, Ford’s executives wondered why it wasn’t selling in Brazil.
Then they found out that in Brazilian Portuguese, “pinto” is slang for “small male genitals.” Considering many men’s attitudes towards their cars, it was no wonder they weren’t thrilled about driving around in this thing.
8. Monkey Gland Sauce
Now, monkey gland sauce isn’t a brand name per se. It’s just the generic — and pretty disgusting — name for a sauce from South Africa.
The thing is, it doesn’t contain any monkey glands. The stuff is made with tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, garlic, and some other ingredients.
So why is it called that? Nobody knows, but one theory suggests it comes from disgruntled French chefs who were outraged by local South Africans’ preference for dousing everything they eat with condiments.
7. Jew’s Ear Juice
In 2009, the Xiaxing China Industry company released a new soft drink in China’s markets. They called it Jew’s Ear Juice.
The name quickly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, started making an international buzz on the internet. But the thing is, the manufacturer didn’t mean anything antisemitic with the name.
Jew’s ear is simply one of the many names of the mushroom Auricularia auricula-judae and the Chinese company just picked it out of a dictionary. Following the controversy, however, they renamed the drink to Black Fungus Juice after another of the mushroom’s names.
Maybe it’s just us, but we still wouldn’t want to drink that.
6. Nad’s
Nad’s is an Australian brand of hair removal products — one of the biggest in the world, in fact. That’s despite the fact that in American slang the brand name translates to “testicles.”
The stuff wasn’t meant for waxing balls, though. Nad’s was founded in 1992 by Australian businesswoman Sue Ismiel after her daughter wanted a less painful method to wax her armpits.
It seems that Nad’s is aware of the double entendre in their name. After all, one of their products is called Nad’s Down Under for Men.
5. IKEA Fartfull
IKEA likes to lean into its Swedish heritage, naming its fiberboard furniture with unpronounceable Swedish words. That doesn’t always work out too well, as the Fartfull workbench showed.
Now, in Swedish, “fart” means “speed.” “Fartfull,” then, translates to “speedy” or “quick.”
Be that as it may, English-speaking customers had a good chuckle with the name. Unsurprisingly, the workbench is no longer available.
Seriously, pick up a dictionary before launching products in foreign markets.
4. Ayds Chocolate
Today, nobody in their right mind (we hope) would name their product “Ayds.” But the thing is, the horrible disease was unknown when Ayds chocolate launched in the 1930s, reaching a market-leading position by the 1970s.
And then came the ‘80s and the AIDS epidemic. As if the chocolate’s name wasn’t bad enough, it was marketed as a “diet” product, intended to help people lose weight.
Considering uncontrollable weight loss is one of AIDS symptoms, that didn’t make things any better. The chocolate manufacturer tried rebranding but the damage was done and Ayds chocolate died in the early ‘90s.
3. Rexona Girl Hello Kitty Pussy Wind
Rexona Girl is the deodorant manufacturer’s brand aimed at tween girls. As such, the word “pussy” has no business being on the bottles.
Yet, the Rexona marketing department had an unfortunate lapse in judgment when naming this limited edition Hello Kitty cross-branded deodorant. They were going for “pussycat” but we guess nobody at the branding meeting stopped to think for even a second.
You know, we can’t decide if being associated with Hello Kitty makes the name better or worse.
2. Analtech
What kinds of products would you think Analtech manufactures? Did you guess “plates and accessories for thin-layer chromatography?”
No, you probably didn’t. This company, founded in 1961, produces equipment for chemical analysis and that’s where the name comes from — Analtech stands for Analytical Technologies.
The thing is, these guys are from Delaware so we can assume they speak fluent English. Therefore, we can only conclude they knew exactly what they were naming their company.
Here’s a fun fact — although Analtech has since rebranded to Miles Scientific, their website still proudly shows off the previous company name as well.
1. TrekStor i.Beat Blaxx
Remember when MP3 players were a thing in the 2000s? One company manufacturing these once-ubiquitous gadgets was German TrekStor.
In 2007, they released a brand-new model, housed in a shiny, piano black case. To market the new device, the company wanted a cool and hip name for it.
So they called it i.Beat Blaxx.
Needless to say, the name proved just a bit controversial. Once the company figured out their gaffe, they scrambled to drop the “i.Beat” part out of the name and rebranded it to simply TrekStor Blaxx.