"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers..." -- Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las VegasOK, I don't love Fear and Loathing, and I definitely don't condone illegal drug use, but it provides the correct way to name a product with a verb. Here, the product is, for example, "uppers." Uppers bring you, well, up. That's what the product does. That makes sense, right? The same goes for downers, and screamers and laughers make you scream and laugh, supposedly.
Another correct way to name something is by assigning it a noun. If I'm boring you with this, I'm sorry, but advertisers don't seem to get it. So, you name something a tree because it's a tree. From then on out, it's a tree.
Now that that's out of the way, I'll move on to what's been really bugging me lately. Food companies have begun naming foods after the verb used to prepare or eat them. A few examples: steamers, dippers, roasters, poppers.
On the surface, whatever. But when I really think about it, this bothers me more and more. Healthy Choice Steamers can be anything. Pictured above is one of Healthy Choice's finer selections: chicken margherita. Essentially, the food is in the package more or less precooked, and you steam it in the microwave. I'm missing where it became a good idea to call it a steamer.
Isn't the gourmet microwave chef using the product the actual steamer here? You steamed something, so you're a steamer. But no, the food being steamed is the steamer. Same thing with dippers. You dip them in a sauce. You're the dipper--not the food.
On a very basic level, this drives me crazy. But that's me. What should drive everyone crazy is that we can only assume the companies with these poorly named products are messing with us. They want us to picture ourselves using the product. The steamers commercials always seem to show a woman gingerly sliding the package into the microwave and smiling her freakin' head off.
It's like they're trying to imply some outrageously fun and exciting process that goes into making a microwave dinner.
Here's a good example for reference: Ramen comes in a variety of flavors, but it's all called Ramen, and the flavor is indicated on the package. I'm fine with that. What if it was called Boiler? Because you boil it. You see what I'm getting at.
On a side note, I'm starting to think I'm alone in my dislike of marketing manipulations like these. No one seems to get what I'm saying when I ask them in person if something about Steamers irks their souls. They only want to offer me the counter argument of "fries." Because you fry them. To that, I say: shut yo' mouth. Firstly, they're really called French fries. Secondly, they would be called "fryers" if they were a part of this horrendous marketing ploy.
See you all next week.
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