Yummy Smiley Umlauts

Less than 24 hours after I published a post about güd products from Burt’s Bees, I spotted two more brand names with umlaut-spangled, smiley-face U’s.

Füd—it’s pronounced “fōōd,” the website helpfully offers—is a vegan restaurant in that cradle of carnivorism, Kansas City. “The mentality of the Midwest is, green is garnish,” owner Heidi Van Pelt-Belle told A.G. Sulzberger of the New York Times.

The umlaut is garnish, too.

Then there’s Yogen Früz, which opened in Toronto in 1986 and now has 1,200 fro-yo “retail concepts” around the world.

In the AMC Metreon 15, San Francisco.

If you see an echo in Yogen Früz of fellow frozen-dessert purveyors Häagen-Dazs and Frusen Glädjé, it’s probably not coincidental. All three brands employ gratuitous accent marks; in the case of Frusen Glädjé (which has been defunct for almost 20 years), the superfluous mark is the acute accent.

Yogen Früz takes that smiley U very seriously: it’s always depicted in a contrasting color, and it often stands in for “you.”

 

 

The company has created a “ucard,” possibly for frequent fro-yoers. Hard to say exactly.

The “Yületide” promotions were cute-bordering-on-cloying.

 

The latest twist: “Ü Serve” locations that let you “explore your inner ‘Yogurtista’.”

Enough already! I’m füll.

Comments

[Mark Gunnion]

And in the language of LOLcats, "food" is rendered as "fud" - no umlaut, though.

http://speaklolcat.com/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

[Sharon]

And I'm about to UpchUck. Sorry. Couldn't figure out how to put the two umlauts in that word.

[tanita]

Wait, though - Fud = “fōōd,”?!
Did they take the same phonics classes I did in the first grade? The long - ō - says its name, yes? So, it's pronounced /fohd/?

Wow.

[Henry]

Interesting too how in the other two examples you cite, the companies also use a contrasting color for the "ü". I guess it's to highlight the smiley face aspect.

[Mark Gunnion]

Here's what the internet is for - an incredible Wikipedia entry about the "Heavy Metal Umlaut":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_umlaut