Shower thought for the morning was: why is cream cheese spread ‘Philadelphia’ called that? Is it from Philadelphia? (My box isn’t, of course: it came from Ireland.)
Nope, it turns out that it was originally invented in New York in the 19th century and named for Philadelphia because Philadelphia, PA was at that point famous for its dairy industry. Just another bit of parasitic branding leveraging a borrowed association, like the Quaker Oats guy or the Rolls Razor. Now I’m wondering how many other examples I can find!
My favourite is the Heinz 57 varieties. There weren’t 57, it was just felt that stating a high number sounded impressive.
I think I read somewhere that Heinz could easily have legitimately picked a number larger than 57, depending on what counts as a “variety”, but chose 57 anyway. Which one can get behind: I mean, 57 “feels” more-significant than a more-round number like e.g. 60, doesn’t it?