Imaginary Brands

In addition Wonder and Old Spice and any number of real brands included in the film Talladega Nights was one that — I believe — is imaginary: Laughing Clown Malt Liquor. So far as I know, you can’t really buy Laughing Clown Malt Liquor. You can, however, buy a Laughing Clown Malt Liquor cap. In fact, they’re on sale. Which might be an indicator that they aren’t exactly catching on.

Still, I think imaginary brands are pretty interesting. The Times ran a story earlier this year about fake brands from the era before product placement became a huge business — Beautee Soap in The Hucksters, Dazzledent in The Seven Year Itch, and so on. (Not mentioned was Vitajex, from the must-see A Face In The Crowd.) I assume there must be more contemporary examples, but all I can think of right now is the Big Kahuna Burger chain in Pulp Fiction. (Googling about that a bit led me to this site, where someone is selling “Bad Mother Fucker” wallets.)

I also came across this article about a German design firm called Schein Berlin, which apparently specializes in fake brands:

In addition to providing products to other TV series, they’ve been designing fake products for the RTL soap “Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten” for five years. For this one show alone, they’ve invented 380 fictional brands, some of which have come into existence in as little as 20 minutes to an hour to meet a set designer’s last-minute needs.

The article says the firm also “built a complete Russian supermarket” for The Bourne Conspiracy, “using hundreds of logos and labels, all of them invented.” But apparently in the film itself, this just flits by and isn’t really noticeable.

Too bad. Somebody should put on a gallery show of fake brand design. I’d love to see it.