Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here. Let's say it's a hot summer
Speaker 1: day and you're enjoying a delicious frozen treat on a stick,
Speaker 1: something we might normally identify with a word that you
Speaker 1: get by combining what the weasel goes in the nursery
Speaker 1: rhyme and one of the two tools on the former
Speaker 1: flag of the Soviet Union. And no, I am not
Speaker 1: talking about round the mulberry bush hammers, because that sounds
Speaker 1: real weird. The word I'm referring to is popsickle. But
Speaker 1: if you look down at the label of your icy snack,
Speaker 1: there's a decent chance that will not be labeled popsicle
Speaker 1: and will instead say that it's a quiescently frozen confection.
Speaker 1: But what does that mean? While the jargon, why can't
Speaker 1: they just say a popsicle? First off, let's break down
Speaker 1: the phrase quiescently frozen confection. Confection just means a sweet
Speaker 1: food or dessert. I assume you know what frozen means
Speaker 1: and quiescently means at rest, this is worth specifying. In
Speaker 1: the world of frozen treats. A quiescently frozen food just
Speaker 1: sits there while it freezes. It is at rest. If
Speaker 1: you've ever made homemade ice pops out of orange juice
Speaker 1: or mountain dew in an ice cube tray in your freezer,
Speaker 1: those were quiescently frozen. This is in contrast to something
Speaker 1: like ice cream, which is not quiescently frozen. Ice Cream
Speaker 1: is frozen and whipped at the same time. In factories
Speaker 1: that make ice cream, a blade called a dasher turns
Speaker 1: inside the ice cream vat to vigorously stir the mix
Speaker 1: while it freezes. This incorporates air bubbles, which is a
Speaker 1: crucial part of forming the internal structure of ice cream,
Speaker 1: making it light and creamy. If you just poured ice
Speaker 1: cream mix into an ice cube tray and frozen, it
Speaker 1: would not taste or feel right. Okay, but we all
Speaker 1: know what popsicle means, so why mess with this scientific mess.
Speaker 1: We do this because popsicle is what we might refer
Speaker 1: to as a proprietary eponym, a word that is actually
Speaker 1: a registered trademark of a company that we've come to
Speaker 1: use as a generic term in common parlance. Other examples
Speaker 1: include xerox for photocopies, band aids for adhesive bandages of
Speaker 1: Velcrow for hook and loop fasteners, Kleenex for tissues, Frisbee
Speaker 1: for throwing discs, and Styrofoam for extruded polystyrene foams. And now,
Speaker 1: if you're a kid asking your friend's mom if you
Speaker 1: can have another popsicle, this probably doesn't matter unless your
Speaker 1: friend's mom is a trademark lawyer for the Unilever Supply
Speaker 1: Chain Incorporated. That's because popsicle is a registered trademark of
Speaker 1: Unilever Supply Chain Incorporated. And they are serious about their
Speaker 1: rights and they've definitely got some lawyers. So how did
Speaker 1: this come to be? People have likely been freezing desserts,
Speaker 1: sometimes on sticks since we've had freezer and sticks. But
Speaker 1: the capital P popsicle ice pop as we know it,
Speaker 1: was developed starting in nineteen oh five by an eleven
Speaker 1: year old kid in San Francisco named Frank Epperson. When
Speaker 1: Eperson grew up, he began selling them as frozen drinks
Speaker 1: on a stick. In nineteen twenty four, he took out
Speaker 1: a patent for his frozen confectionery. By nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: he had started calling these frozen confections popsicles. The apparent
Speaker 1: logic there being a combination of soda, pop and icicle,
Speaker 1: or possibly his children called them the icicles that their
Speaker 1: pop made. That very year, he sold the rights to
Speaker 1: the Joe Lowe Company in New York. Fast forward to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, when Unilever's subsidiary Good Humor bought the
Speaker 1: rights to the name popsicle. Unilever still owns those rights.
Speaker 1: But do they really care if you use the term generically? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: yes they do. According to Unilever's public facing website, you
Speaker 1: should never use popsicles a noun, but rather as a modifier.
Speaker 1: You don't want a popsicle, you want a popsicle ice pop. Similarly,
Speaker 1: you should not pluralize the word. You're not going to
Speaker 1: the store to buy popsicles, You're gonna buy popsicle pops.
Speaker 1: And if you said that you love popsicles great taste,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the flavor of a company. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about the food product, you would be more correct
Speaker 1: to say the great taste of popsicle ice pops. If
Speaker 1: you happen to decide to start a business selling your
Speaker 1: own quiescently frozen confections, definitely do not think ah normal
Speaker 1: people call them popsicles. It'll be fine. After all, lawyers
Speaker 1: are not normal people, and uni leavers. Trademark warriors have
Speaker 1: gone after small businesses before and demanded that all infringement
Speaker 1: of the popsicle trademark be scrubbed from existence. But so remember,
Speaker 1: and next time you're about to leave some event early
Speaker 1: and you want to sound cool, I don't say let's
Speaker 1: blow this popsicle stand. Say let's blow this quiescently frozen
Speaker 1: confection stand like a good law abiding citizen. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was originally published in twenty eighteen, but I decided I
Speaker 1: wanted to update some of the phrasing, so here we are.
Speaker 1: It's based on a videoscript that Joe McCormick wrote for
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com. To hear more from him, check
Speaker 1: out his podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Brain Stuff
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Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts
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