Horrible Yet Appropriate Brand Name of the Week

If I had been in charge of choosing an official snack food for this week’s Republican National Convention—an unlikely-to-the-nth-degree assignment, but fun to imagine—I would not have hesitated. Every bowl in every hospitality suite would have been filled with Pepperidge Farm Jingos!™

 

Also available in Parmesan Garlic and Fiesta Cheddar flavors.

Here’s the product description:

Bold Flavor, Snappy Crunch™
Ready for a bite? Our uniquely crunchy crackers are always baked and are seasoned twice for an explosive taste every time! It’s Jingos!™ A fun new way to snack from Pepperidge Farm.

And here’s the definition of jingo from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

“[M]indless, gung-ho patriot,” 1878, picked up from the refrain of a music hall song written by G.W. Hunt, and sung by “Gilbert H. MacDermott” (1845-1901), supporting aggressive British policy toward Russia at a time of international tension. (“We don’t want to fight, But by Jingo! if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, We’ve got the money too.")

Hunt’s patriotic song of 1878, with a swinging tune ... became at Macdermott’s instigation the watchword of the popular supporters of England’s bellicose policy. The “Daily News” on 11 March 1878 first dubbed the latter ‘Jingoes’ in derision .... [“Dictionary of National Biography,” London, 1912]

Source: Digital Journal.

 

Pepperidge Farms filed for trademark protection of “Jingos!” in July 2011. The mark was approved on August 19, 2012, which means the ™ will be changing to ®. According to the Trademarkia record, “The description provided to the USPTO for JINGOS is Crackers.”

“Crackers” could also describe how some people feel about the 2012 Republican Party platform, which supports the public display of the Ten Commandments, says English should be “the official language of our nation,” calls same-sex marriage “an assault on the foundations of our society,” and opposes gun legislation that would limit “the capacity of clips or magazines.”

(More crackers: Twitter friend ArmaVirumque reminds me that big donors to the Romney campaign were treated Wednesday to a party aboard “Cracker Bay,” a 150-foot yacht belonging to a Florida real-estate developer. The vessel flies the flag of the Cayman Islands.)

Thanks to Jessica Stone Levy for the Jingos! tip.

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P.S. I will do my best to keep this blog a no-political-outbursts zone in this presidential election season, but Jingos! is just too irresistible a target to overlook.

Comments

[tanita]

Jingos is crackers?!

My mind unfortunately went to an even worse place.

[heydave]

Speaking for myself, your outbursts are very well behaved and quite docile compared to mine, and I personally find them welcome.