My father was visiting last week. It took his discerning eye to draw our attention to the name of our current toilet paper brand, which I hadn’t noticed before:
Happyend, a German brand. No word yet on the specific terms of this guarantee.
Meanwhile, Mr. Clean has become Mr. Proper:
Same guy, but over here his fastidious nature extends to moral issues as well.
For more fun in this vein, see Sick/Barf.
Why are those things in English anyway?
Well, if they’re not in the glorious universal language that is English, then you’ve gotta brand them separately for each Central European destination, assuming you have an international product.
I can’t speak to the thinking behind ‘Happyend’, but ‘Proper’ was definitely chosen with an ear towards the Slavic market. Slavic languages are phonetic and consonant-heavy, and they definitely don’t do ‘ea’s… so ‘Clean’ isn’t gonna fly.
Here I thought there was a logical reason!
With respect to Happyend, does it refer to a happy end of the process or to the part of the anatomy involved. Or it is a clever marketing pun?
Mr. Proper was first branded in western europe. Germany Mr. Proper and France Monsier Propre. After the curtain fell it was easier for P&G to keep the name for eastern europe.
Oops, In the UK it was branded ‘Flash’