Talk:Snickers

RFD 2015

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Snickers

A particular chocolate bar. Compare Mars, Bounty, Twix, Toblerone, Kinder Egg, Toffee Crisp, Aero, Wonka Mud Sludge. --Type56op9 (talk) 11:13, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

My favourite mainstream chocolate bar, by the way, is the Crunchie. Mars Bar party, Hershey squirts and Hershey highway all exist BTW, and Milky Bar kid seems like it might warrant inclusion.

• It was renamed from "Marathon" years ago. Probably a registered trademark. Donnanz (talk) 12:40, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Actually, it was always called "Snickers" in the U.S., since its introduction in 1930; it was called "Marathon" in the UK, but was changed to "Snickers" there in 1990. bd2412 T 18:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I suppose it should undergo RFV since it's quite well known. Personally I fail to see the value of brand names in a dictionary, though. Equinox ◑ 13:09, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes brand names are used generically with such frequency that the reader may not realize that the word is a brand at all. Sometimes authors presume the brand name to be so well known that they use it as a descriptor with no context whatsoever, so that the reader unfamiliar with the brand will not know what the word means. Those are the kinds of cases intended to be covered by WT:BRAND. In any case, even coined brand names (like coined place names and coined surnames) are words with their own etymology, pronunciation, and occasionally derivations. Where a reader is likely to come across such a word in print, and lacks contextual cues to place the word, these are useful things to have. bd2412 T 16:17, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Here is an example of "Snickers" used out of context, where a reader would need to look it up to know what it means:

• 2012, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Bob: A Life in Five Acts, page 24.

  BOB. Jeanine used to pull out a Snickers from her purse every time we hit a snag, like when there was four hours of traffic to get to Hoover Dam, when I got a B on a chemistry test, or when we got to the Michelle Kwan Museum and it was closed for renovation. I could really use a Snickers right now.

The work gives no further context to the meaning of "Snickers" other than a "Snickers wrapper" being found later. It could just as easily be a medication, a cosmetic, or a sanitation device. More will likely be easily found. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. After further examination, this easily meets WT:BRAND with uses in print that provide no context as to the meaning of the term. I have added a half dozen more. There are also such things as Snickers ice cream (which usually contains pieces of actual Snickers) and Snickers pie (which is a pie made with ingredients common to a Snickers, but not necessarily actual Snickers). bd2412 T 17:46, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
• Keep - "all words in all languages" SemperBlotto (talk) 08:06, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I have come to the conclusion that my objection to brand names in a dictionary is more of a broader objection to a focus on contemporary brands in fiction, novels, news, etc., and I basically hate postmodernism. (Dickens didn't fill his books with references to corporations.) My brief mortal span isn't going to win that battle, so what the hell, keep it, and let the "professional" dictionaries catch up, and see who tries to sue us for not covering their brand's "meaning" properly. Equinox ◑ 02:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

• Shakespeare did some product placement, as it turns out, mentioning the wines of specific regions (Canary, Malmsey, and Sack). Maybe he was paid to do this, or maybe he just did it so that the reader/audience member could get an authentic sense of the character through the character's mention of the beverage. See, e.g., Love's Labour's Lost, Act V., scene ii: Biron. "Nay then, two treys, and if you grow so nice / Metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice!" Branding as we now know it didn't exist in Shakespeare's day; naming wines by specific region is about as close as he could get to it. bd2412 T 17:54, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Probably closer to the "martini, shaken- not stirred" James Bond references: used to establish an image, rather than sell something. I imagine there was also incentive to throw in some alcohol references to go with the sexual innuendo and bathroom humor designed to appeal to as broad a spectrum of theater-goers as possible: you had your sophisticated character studies and musings on the nature of society, along with thinly-disguised penis jokes and references to clearing the countryside with laxatives- something for everyone. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I should add that the closest thing to product placement was politics: King James published a treatise on witchcraft, which just happens to be a big part of Macbeth, as is Scottish history. There's also a reference somewhere to vikings as "Norweyan", since referring to them as Danes might put the queen, who was from Denmark, in a bad light. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that one would not have to go too far past Shakespeare's day to find mentions of actual commercial brands in literature, either as paid product placement, or as narrative tools used to describe characters by reference to the characteristics associated with the brand. I recall reading that Charles Dickens refused an offer to buy the placement of a "patent medicine" in one of his books, but I suspect that the account shows the practice to be an established one at that point. bd2412 T 22:20, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

• Keep per bd2412. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 14:52, 19 April 2015 (UTC)