Brandwashed

This picture comes to you all the way from the South African edition of the Internet. For those of you who have had to put up with Blucrap to stick your Kylie posters to the wall - meet Prestik.

You press it, it sticks. Job done.

Where I grew up, if you needed something stuck on a wall, you reached for the Prestik. It did what it said it would do. You pressed - it stuck.

Then I headed north to find that the sticky poster-to-wall adhesive market is cornered by a product called Blutack. Blue and tacky - that's the best the Bostik marketers could come up with. It doesn't really give them much scope for development, now does it? Any old adhesive company could easily just decide to tip a different dye into the same sticky recipe and invent Blacktack (now there's a catchy brand name).

Call a product by what it helps you to do or how it works, not by what it looks like. Can anyone think of another product that is arbitrarily only available in one colour?

I came across the Arsol brand first in Italy. We were speeding towards Naples on a train and a passing factory caught my eye. They seemed to be manufacturing steel products, but a little internet search has since found another comapny that shares the esteemed brand name - this time in the software industry.

Brands mean different things to different people around the world - often with hillarious consequences. I invite you to share the weird and wonderful brands you have discovered, right here.