-
What kind of idiot names a company APPLE????
-
Well, not that we are all that much of a wild success story, but our little company is Fantastic Plastic.
We are often asked about the name and what it means. Actually, it came from a magazine article about Los Angeles that I read when I was just a pup, probably pushing 25 years ago. The title was “Hollywood: A Plastic, Fantastic Place.” I just liked the two words a lot and thought they sounded good together… with “plastic” really referring to the fact that a lot of what we do is really quite fake and phoney stuff that we make look real.
It was only after we had been in business for quite a while that I discovered there is a somewhat obscure Jefferson Airplane song called “Plastic Fantastic Lover” which actually is about… television. Weird.
We like the name… although we do occasionally get a phone call asking “What kind of adult novelties do you sell?”
We thought the name was unique… but as we have learned, not much in this world is. You’ll see banks and stores every now and then run credit card promotions that they call “Fantastic Plastic.” There was a used record store in Seattle called Fantastic Plastic (we actually bought their domain name for an arm and a leg), as well as a British record label with the same moniker (we get their email a lot from people who accidentally use the .com suffix instead of theirs which is .co.uk).
There’s also a fairly well known house-music producer with my name, Todd Terry… and in a weird twist of fate, one of the music groups he has worked a lot with is called The Fantastic Plastic Machine.
I guess there are no new ideas. Or at least very few of them.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Thanks for the tip on Googol, guys. Check this from Wikipedia:
“Other names for googol include ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.”
Zagnut is funky, but the product does have nuts – in fact, it has no chocolate at all, just peanut and coconut…..
-
Google from Googol is a well known story. But what else is important about that misspelling is that it makes the name unique enough to trademark. The heartless and soulless mutants that run the Sci-Fi network re-branded it to “Syfy” for that reason, according to them.
The Quarrymen> Long John and the Silver Beetles> The Beatles. Been done before.
-
Famous (to me) ad campaign by the Legendary Stan Freeberg for Zagnut. For the life of me, I can’t find a clip online anywhere, but there is the basic spot:
The commercial is about the Candy Company CEO touring the plant and taking a meeting with his marketing staff about naming the new candy bar. They enumerate all the copy points and discuss how they fed all that into one of those newfangled electronic brain computer machines to generate the most optimal name for the candy bar. The little tape spools out of the machine and they read it to the CEO:
“Zagnut!”
The CEO goes ballistic; that’s the worst-sounding name he’s ever heard, it will never work. They point out the office window to the warehouse, where already truckloads of bars have been made and wrapped and boxed for shipment, all with the unlovely name. Fait Accompli’.
“Oh, well,” the CEO shrugs, says “we’ll give it a shot”.
Ask any stand-up comedian; Zagnut IS the funniest candy bar name in the world.
-
[Mark Suszko] “The Quarrymen> Long John and the Silver Beetles> The Beatles. Been done before.”
Damn you Suszko!!! I was just about to add that. Would you quit reading my thoughts please, it’s getting mighty annoying.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
-
How about Xerox or Kleenex, both ubiquitous names when juxtaposed against the grander scale of a “who struck John” mentality. On the other hand…..
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media -
YAHOO is rumored to be an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Oracle Offering.
Cine-Med is obviously a marriage between Cinema and Medicine.
Yet there is also a Mediterranean Film Festival by the same name.What kind of idiot named Apple? A really smart idiot.
Drug names are mostly meaningless amalgamations of too many consonants and not enough vowels. X, Y and Z are popular these days. P, D and Q may be up and coming letters!
Sometimes they sound like the chemical name but not always. Interestingly is the fact that a drug developed for one purpose if sometimes known for another purpose, like those drugs that men take before they sit in bathtubs at sunset.
Recently I came up with a list of potential names for a co-worker’s son’s rock band. None of the names have anything to do with music but they sound cool.
I guess that’s what it comes down to – does it sound cool or at least is it something you would remember.
Most appropriate for this thread is the fact that the COW in Creative COW is in fact an acronym, yet the four-legged ruminant of the same name gets all the press!
Although the world flags sitting in the sunny meadow at the top of the page remind us this is a community of the world.
Mooo.
Mike Cohen
-
Bessie, I offer you my humblest apologies. I would say that you single-handedly changed my perception of what cows can achieve. Forgive me, but until about ten years ago, most of my experience with bovine were on my wife’s family’s farm in Kentucky – and we didn’t get along too well ever since I was assigned the job of “banding” the calves by my future father in law.
That said, my perceptions have changed since seeing what creative cows can accomplish, and I’ve been trying to drum up support for the “Cows in Space Moovement” for the past several years.
We already have Longhorns training at Johnson Space Center in the hopes that we soon have a heavy lift vehicle ready. Here’s a picture of some old-school Rocky IV style strength training near rocket park:
-
Oh, and by the way, the human astronauts have been showing support for cows in space for years! Here’s a photo from the aft flight deck during the STS-30 space shuttle mission all the way back in 1989:
-
[Mike Cohen] “Drug names are mostly meaningless amalgamations of too many consonants and not enough vowels. X, Y and Z are popular these days. P, D and Q may be up and coming letters! “
My favorite of the current crop of those advertised on TV is ACIPHEX, a drug for heartburn and acid reflux.
Every time I see that commercial I can’t help but think they didn’t run that name by a focus group before running with it. But, you never know, maybe it was so hated by their focus group that it cemented the deal???
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up