Yesterday I was reminded of a rule-of-thumb I had created a number of years ago regarding product names. Unfortunately, I don’t remember its origional form, but it boils down to the following:

Any product that has a superlative, a color, or an animal in its title, is generally not good.

Now, there are exceptions to the rule, but in general, here’s evidence I present for this rule:

1. Red Dog – color and animal
2. Seattle’s Best Coffee – superlative
3. Milwaukee’s Best – superlative
4. Pabst Blue Ribbon – color and possibly suprlative if you consider “blue ribbon” to be first prize

It is curious to note that most of my examples in the theory are beer. 🙂 One corallary is that if the beer type is named after color, it should be excused. Otherwise, passible things such as Leiny’s Red and Killian’s Red, would fall under the rule.

Exceptions to the rule:

1. Grey Goose Vodka
2. Johnny Walker Blue
3. Blue Moon

As I find more exceptions, maybe my rule isn’t that good…..