Pop Balance

I think it's cute when generic products ape the name of mainstream products at grocery stores (Mountain Weg--Wegmans' version of Mountain Dew--is my personal favorite). Sure, it's probably closer to copyright infringment than it is to parody but I excuse it because it's almost a mockery of the obscene amount of money and time their popular counterparts spend on brainstorming sessions and focus groups just to come up with the name of spinoff products and flavors. In the end, they're often selling the product's image instead of its quality which is lame. Generics have no interest in the image or the quality which is so lame that it's cool!

If you followed that logic, then stick with me for this one. When mainstream products use tons of resources to research product names and decide that TOTALLY RIPPING OFF OTHER PEOPLE is the most effective recourse, like The Ghost of Orville Redenbacher did here...

...then it's Super Lame! Smart Pop? Really? "Smart" is the word you felt would make your product appear unique on the shelf amongst all the other low calorie popcorns*? Or are you really just trying to trick people into either accidentally picking up your box thinking it's someone else's or allowing "smart" to become a valid popcorn-related marketing buzzword. Nice fucking wavy green banner too, assholes. Oh wait, Orville's's** is totally different--it curls down at the end while Smart Balance's curls up.

You know, I go to the grocery store to calm down after a shitty day working at a shitty megacorporation and this is what I'm confronted with.

I'm going to go scream now.

*Please note that Pop Smart and Smart Balance were not directly next to each other on the shelf and this photo is just a manipulative dramatization like they do on the tee vee.

** Totally valid contraction, just look at photo example on Wikipedia***

*** JOKES ON YOU ORVILLE, I TOTALLY DID THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!