Top left: Early Beich’s “Laffy Taffy” wrapper from before being bout out by Nestle (from: Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream); on right a Cadbury’s “Curly Wurly” wrapper (from: Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream); below that: an early “Reese’s Pieces” wrapper (from: Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream); bottom row left: 1950s “Dubble Bubble” bubble gum (via: Ebay); on right: original (flattened out) “Mello Yello” soda can (from: Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream)
Continuing with the self-rhyming brand name thread, here are some high-fructose examples. I wanted to stick with two syllable rhymes, but there are certainly other sweets whose brand names have internal rhyme schemes… Pixie Stix, Payday, Swedish Fish, Ring Dings… and I’m sure there are many others… what have I left out? (Feel free to jump in here.)
Note how many of these names use misspelled words… “Laffy” (not laughy), “Wurly” (not whirly), “Dubble” (not double) and “mello yello” (not Mellow Yellow). In most cases, the misspelling serves to make the rhyming words a closer match, typographically.
With “Mello Yello,” I wondered, was the removal of the two ‘w’s to avoid litigation with Donovan? Except that (according to Wikipedia) they used a cover version of his song in the soda’s introductory TV commercial, so who knows?
Quality of graphics is mixed, in my opinion. I really like the early “Curly Wurly” typography. Interesting that in both “Laffy Taffy” and “Curly Wurly” the ‘y’s loop around to intrude on the preceding letters. The typography of the early “Reese’s Pieces” wrapper looks bad to me. The stroked outline on “Reese’s” seems too heavy and looks as if it might be cutting into the letter shapes. (Could also be bad trapping, I suppose.)
Anyway, it’s “self-rhyming brand name week” on box vox.
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