Branding gone too far

So I'm standing in line at my local deli, waiting to order my custom salad. The woman in front of me is pointing at the ingredients she wants added to her bowl of mesclun. "And chicken, and walnuts, and Craisins," she says while pointing at a bowl of cranberries (!). The salad-maker behind the counter is game. "Raisins or craisins?" he asks. "Craisins," she confirms. I looked closely to see if they may in fact be that raisin/cranberry blend sold by Ocean Spray (doubtful that there is anything special about a Craisin other than having extra sugar and being GMO-plumped up), but no, the bowl is indeed a bowl of dried cranberries.

It's my turn and I decide it is my civic duty to order cranberries on my salad, and to emphasize cranberries when I put in my order. The salad-maker is game once again, catching the linguistic fast-balls (or perhaps change-ups) as they come.

Comments

[amanda]

Okay, I'll bite. I honestly had no idea until I read the wikipedia entry just now that "craisin" was a registered trademark of Ocean Spray International, Inc. I'll confess that I use the term often, when I'm too lazy to come up with "dried" and "cranberry".

Fun fact: Ocean Spray has themselves edited the entry on "dried cranberry" but they didn't say much.