The 10 Most Ill-Conceived Booze Brand Names
Ah, guest articles. Someone writes about drinking so we have some free time.
To drink.
It's last call, the bar has been drained of all decent brand-name booze and these labels are presented to us on a menu. Instead of taking a chance and actually drinking this cut-rate swill, we flag down a taxi and get the hell out of Dodge. There ought to be a law against booze brand names this off-putting.
Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout
What the Company Might Have Intended:
The cartoon of the winking, cleavage-bearing sexpot masseuse on the label indicates this wasn't a case of someone having failed to check out the urban dictionary before naming the beer. They were overtly using sexual double entendres and scantily clad women to appeal to horny men. Sounds sort of brilliant to us.
Why They Failed:
Until we read the description on the label, "A huge, dry hopped stiffy, for a full-figured beer, resulting in an explosive finish!" You might be able to get men to buy t-shirts with those words written on it, but probably not a frothy white liquid that is meant to be poured down their throats.
Deerstalker Scotch
What the Company Might Have Intended:
A deerstalker is a name for the jaunty cap that Sherlock Holmes wears. What better way to make sure your single malt distinguishes itself from low brow American brands than by naming it after something that can be described as jaunty?
Why They Failed:
The modern deer hunter isn't the refined sportsman he used to be. Add the term "stalker" to the mix and ordering a tumbler of this falls between having BO and casually mentioning that you have a "litter of 10 out there, somewhere" as a sure way to end a date prematurely.
Above: An actual deer-stalker.
Dr. Loosen Riesling
What the Company Might Have Intended:
The eponymous Dr. Loosen started this winery nearly 200 years ago and the German vintner has been run by assorted progeny since.
Why They Failed:
It would appear the Loosens never wondered why their English speaking friends were snickering under their kerchiefs every time someone said the name of their wine. Yes, booze has been helping ugly people get laid since the first caveman realized it was less messy than an old fashioned clubbing. So it might have worked as a novelty name for one of Sweetwater Brewing Company's suggestively named brews. But winery's look to project an image of refinement, and thus tend to avoid brand names that sound like Motley Crue cover bands. "Loosen up" is the catch phrase of date rapists around the world. Tack a doctor onto the front and you've got a mustache-twirling creep in a grungy white coat with a special getting-to-know-you rate for all the young mothers in town.
Of course by the time the Loosen's found out, they were probably too flush with money from Ivy League frat boys to actually care.
Kelpie Organic Seaweed Ale
What the Company Might Have Intended:
This beer is apparently brewed using seaweed. And the company is apparently proud of that.
Why They Failed:
Seaweed isn't all bad. As a kid it was always a good time to toss a handful of the black-green disgustingness at your sister and watch her react like it was battery acid. And when we're walking down the beach and step in something squishy and think it's a turd, we're always happy to look down and see seaweed there instead. Yes, we might have been able to let seaweed get away with it had the label not bragged that this seaweed beer is organic, leading us to the horrifying realization that someone, somewhere is growing seaweed on steroids.
British Navy Pusser's Rum
What the Company Might Have Intended:
Members of the British Navy, back when they were out sailing into mysterious foreign ports to bayonet the locals and open post offices, were kept from mutiny largely by a daily allotment--a "tot"--of rum. Sure there was the scurvy, the filthy living conditions and, if you were the cabin boy, the constant fear of being raped and/or eaten, but none of that would seem as terrible if you were out of your gourd on rum at the time. What's more, the daily pint of rum also helped contribute to turning sailors' skin cirrhosis-of-the-liver yellow, which made for a pleasant effect in combination with the sun shining off their faces as they were tipped into the ocean during at-sea burials. On the ships of old, the daily tot of rum was doled out by a purser and "pusser" is how you pronounce "purser" when you're British, drunk off your ass, and dying of cirrhosis.
Why They Failed:
Well, there's the fact that pusser sounds like the kind of sore you don't want to get after spending a drunken night with a stranger. But we think the picture painted by the real meaning is more likely to make us run from it like it were on fire.
Entire Butt Porter
What the Company Might Have Intended:
Butt, it turns out, is an old English term for barrel, so "entire butt" means "the entire barrel" and has nothing whatever to do with asses.
Why They Failed:
All meaning-of-word nonsense aside, there's no getting around the fact that this is ass beer. If you order this, you'll be left to the mercies of your howling friends who can inquire quite justifiably, "Tell me, just how does ASS taste?" This also goes for Butcombe Bitter, all of the beers put out by Butts Brewery (particularly our favorite "Le Butts Biere") and, of course, king of the ass beers, AASS Bock out of Belgium.
Above: Butt.
Old Grand Dad Porter
What the Company Might Have Intended:
It's the quaint tradition of passing down a taste for hard liquor to your young grandchildren.
Why They Failed:
"Mommy, grandpa smells funny."
Burgerbrau Bad Reichenhall Suffikator
What the Company Might Have Intended:
When you have a German beer you might as well make it sound German. Germany is home to some of the best beer in the world--maybe the best. And they also like to drink it in giant steins with food that'll run through you with the speed and devastation of forest fire. So the country's boozing credentials are solid.
Why They Failed:
Deutschland is also home to the highest concentration of booze brand names that sound like biblical plagues--as in the many 'Hell' beers, a la Bock Hell (hell means "light" in German). But Burgerbrau Bad Reichenhall Suffikator takes the stein. Our German is imperfect, but it's either a rough translation of the words "Richard's Castle Natural Springwater" or a phonetically spelled murder confession from a retarded man who suffocated someone named Rachel.
The Bishop's Finger
What the Company Might Have Intended:
Impossible to tell as we have no psychological profile of the person who named it.Why They Failed:
Why just his finger? Couldn't it have been his whole hand? Then at least you could put a picture of him slapping the pope five on your bottle or something. You have to go through many different combinations of occupation and body part before you arrive at something so thoroughly disquieting. Honestly we couldn't come up with one. The best we could do was Fisherman's Taint, and even that feels less unassumingly evil than this one.
Shingleback Shiraz
What the Company Might Have Intended:
Shingleback lizards roam large parts of Australia, especially Bondi Beach.
Why They Failed:
Shingles is the common name of the nervous disorder Herpes Zoster and the most common place for the disease to present itself is as red marks on the back. All in all, it's a little closer than you want to come to naming your red wine herpesdick.
Noel Boivin and Christopher Lombardo often didn't even bother looking at the label of whatever they were drinking while researching the real-life stories that fill their book The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery. They currently quaff only the good stuff as writers of the biting, boozin' comedy site TheSharkGuys.com
