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The Rise and Fall of Matchbox's Toy-Car Empire

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182 points NaOH | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 20:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.195s | source
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pge ◴[17 Oct 24 11:19 UTC] No.41868506[source]▶
As an American growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, we called all die-cast metal cars “matchbox cars,” even though many (all?) of them were Hot Wheels. I never knew there were two competing brands.
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TacticalCoder ◴[17 Oct 24 11:34 UTC] No.41868619[source]▶
Growing up in a french speaking country, we'd call all ballpoint pens "bic".

Because of this:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_(entreprise)

Up to this day many still say, on a daily basis, say, a "bic bleu" (blue ballpen) or "bic noir" (black ballpen).

And virtually everyone french speaking calls a refrigerator (fridge) a "frigo".

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tetris11 ◴[17 Oct 24 11:53 UTC] No.41868769[source]▶
I was puzzled when I sneezed in Germany and someone asked if I wanted a Tempo.
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TeMPOraL ◴[17 Oct 24 12:24 UTC] No.41868989[source]▶
I was shocked when I first started participating in discussions on-line on international boards like this one, some 10+ years ago, and discovered that in America, you sneeze into a Kleenex and cut stuff with X-Acto knives.

Then again, we've been calling a certain class of shoes "Adidas" since 1990s, so I shouldn't be surprised by the phenomenon. Not to mention, I don't think anyone in Poland ever used the generic term for a photocopier - we all call it "ksero" machines (from Xerox).

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1. onemoresoop ◴[17 Oct 24 13:30 UTC] No.41869500[source]▶
I did grow up on the eastern block (not Poland) and we also called Adidas shoes a type of sneakers that could be a different brand, it was the style that we called them like that. There were a lot more genericized trademarks/eponyms. I can think of two more: one for Blue Jeans which sounded something like "blu Gee" (from blue jeans) and "Jeep" which we called any car that looked like a Jeep but of any brand.