The Sinister Trade Mark Plot

While Fogbound in a beach cottage one summer day, I was glancing through a soggy copy of the New York Herald Tribune that a neighbor had used to giftwrap a bluefish, when my eye chanced upon a White Rock ad and skidded to a stop – Psyche, the kneeling nymph, had taken a dive off her rock! "White Rock introduces a great new drink . . .The Vodka Plunge made with new White Rock Vodka (The world's one and only)!" the ad said, and went on to predict that, "Everybody will soon be taking "The Plunge'! It's the vodka drink of the year . . . cooling, delicious, surprising!!"

Now, I don't know how surprising!! the Vodka Plunge may be, but the sight of Psyche heading toward imminent immersion was sure startling to this aficionado of the well-filled glass. Psyche on her rock had been one of the few remaining symbols of stability in a world shot through with fickleness and flux. She was my favorite trade mark, and I loved her just as she was – poised over her pool on hands and knees, her downcast eyes searching the gently troubled water, as though she had just dropped her bra, and was watching it sink to the bottom.

What drinking man has not mused fondly upon those drooping lashes, that provocative pair of little wings? And now, here she was, shrouded to the collarbone in a plain cotton housedress, taking the Vodka Plunge! – I couldn't have been more shaken if Betty Crocker and Lydia Pinkham had been caught making passes at the Smith Brothers.

The paper slipped from my fingers like wilted lettuce, and shock gave way to despair, mixed with bourbon and ice. The mythical queen of carbonation had fallen, and nowhere in the pantheon of modern merchandising would we find her like again. Having compromised her mineral-water purity by becoming a Vodka Mixer, she would now be condemned to dwell in mortal competition with such plebeian rivals as tomato juice and ginger beer. She might even be forced to abdicate, leaving the office of White Rock Girl to be filled by annual election, like that of Miss Rheingold.

As through a half-empty glass darkly, I could already discern the dim but ample outlines of Gina Hoople or Marilyn Glutz succeeding to what must now become a purely titular post.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I became convinced that Psyche hadn't jumped at all – she had been pushed. Some fun-loving ad man had spitballed the idea into the Martiniladen air of a Madison Avenue conference, half in jest. It had been pingponged around, kicked apart, rebuilt, trial-ballooned, revisioned, finalized, yeschecked, and activated – and all without the least consideration for Psyche's status as one of the immortals of standardbrand marketing. Goddess that she was, I had even invested her with an off-label love life – an Olympian liaison with that winged wonder of the public service field, the Man on the Telephone Book. Lightning in one hand, a stout length of heavy-duty cable in the other, he would steal to her rock at the height of the vernal equinox, and of this mystic, albeit mossy, union between the Spirit of Communication and the Soul of Effervescence would be born a set of sprites – Wit and Eloquence – who would reign over all earthly conversation as the little Twin Gods of Repartee.

But the time for whimsy was past. I hadn't seen the Man on the Telephone Book since 1954, when he had been summarily banished from the covers of the Manhattan Directory in favor of color shots of local landmarks – things like the Women's House of Detention in spring, the former site of Leon & Eddie's, and the boyhood home of ex-Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri. "Whither are we drifting?" I asked, with more alarm than originality. "What has happened to the sanctity of the American trade mark?"

As though in reply, the Herald Tribune itself noted the appearance of another straw in the wind, not a fortnight later. Buried in the business section under Richard Phalon's by-line, the item was headed, "Flying Red Horse Gets A New Sign, A Shrinking."

"A filling station symbol by another shape has seemed sweeter to Socony Mobil Company, ever since it changed its name from Socony-Vacuum Company," Phalon reported.

"After almost 18 months at the drawing boards, the company announced it had come up with a new device that it hopes will build a stronger bond between itself and the entire Mobil product line.

"The sign, which will be stenciled on everything from bulk plants to business cards, preserves the heraldry of Socony's famed Flying Red Horse, but subordinates it to the Mobil name.

"In the old device, according to the company, its latter-day version of Pegasus rated 12 percent of station sign space and 'Mobil' 14 percent. The revamping, carried out by Peter Schladermundt Associates, assigns the horse two percent and the company name 29 percent.

"The big change, however, has come in the shape. The shield Socony has been using for almost a quarter-century was compressed into a kind of off-beat rectangle, reinforced with a V-shaped band of red and, the company thinks, offers considerably more eye-appeal."

So there you are, the Flying Red Horse reduced by 10 percent. Clearly another Munich for the trade mark. I hope you get a picture of what that "off-beat rectangle" looks like, because I don't. Is it a be-bop parallelogram? A trapezoid with a beard? But hang on to your jiggers, while we hear Mr. Phalon out. After all, it's not his fault. He's just reporting the news.

"Eye-appeal was what Socony was after," he goes on to explain. "Recently the company began having some second thoughts on the 'Colonial' flavour of its sign. To check its effectiveness Socony ran off two films giving equal time and treatment to Shell, Esso and Mobilgas displays alike.

"The results added up to an advertising man's nightmare. Even in the New York Metropolitan area, where the Mobil name is something to conjure with, the company's Flying Red Horse just barely managed to finish.

"Asked to name the sign seen most frequently in the film, 59 percent of all viewers picked Esso,23.4 percent named Shell and only 17.7 percent focused on Mobilgas."

All of which sounded reasonable enough until I paused to examine the facts. Surely we have all had difficulty focusing on Mobilgas at one time or another, I reasoned. But didn't the same hold true of Esso and Shell? Speaking personally, there have been times when even Texaco looked a little fuzzy to me. But that would hardly justify compressing the familiar red star into the shape of a lopsided blintz.

Without any reflections on anybody, I also felt that we ought to consider the sort of audience that would sit through a double-feature composed of nothing but Shell, Esso and Mobilgas displays. Where did Socony ever manage to dig up such a bunch? Were they professional focusers, or just visually slipshod pleasure-seekers, who had been lured into the projection room under the impression that they were going to preview the rushes of a new Bugs Bunny film? As one whose sole interest is the preservation of our national trade marks, I think Socony should be called upon to answer these questions. What's more, I find it decidedly suspicious that the total percentage of persons in attendance comes to 100.1.

Who or what does that .1 of a person represent? Could it have been that one of Peter Schladermundt's associates already had his foot in the door? Or had ears inimical to our country's welfare been listening at Socony's keyhole?

It was with a start that I realized that each of the trade marks in question had one thing in common – wings! Was it possible that this tampering with time-honored symbols could have tied in with the East-West struggle for air supremacy? With guided missile research? Earth satellite experiments? It was a sobering thought, and I was doing my best to shake it, when I suddenly recalled that Psyche had been doing the Vodka Plunge!

Not that there was anything wrong with vodka, in itself. Distilled from pure American grain, and available at your local hobby shop, it represents as nice a way to spend an evening as I can think of. But despite manufacturers' efforts to claim it as a 100-proof Yankee-Doodle booze, certain age-old associations with Muscovy still adhere. It is, after all, the Russian pause that refreshes, and is known the world over as the brew that made Khrushchev famous. Wasn't it logical to suppose, then, that this wholesale desecration of our trade marks might be the result of a new Soviet offensive, designed to shake our faith in name-brand dependability?

But, no, I told myself. While such skulduggery might be in perfect keeping with the spirit of Geneva, it wasn't likely that anyone the Kremlin would send to infiltrate our advertising agencies could survive very long on Madison Avenue. Skill in palace warfare and a working knowledge of secret-police methods would ill-prepare one for the cloak-and-dagger high jinks of an average day at the office.

Lulled into a false sense of security, I was sitting around conjuring with the Mobil name, when the news broke six days later. Date line, Bangkok. A.T. Steele filing By Wireless to the Herald Tribune. Headline: "Reds Using Santa Claus – His Picture Helps Sell Goods in Southeast Asia."

Grateful for the fact that A.T. Steele had the good sense to wireless rather than write, I cracked out a fresh set of ice cubes, and read as I mixed.

"'Santa Claus' brand rolled oats, made in Tsingtao, symbolize Communist China's trade offensive in Southeast Asia. The packaged cereal, adorned with a cheerful portrait of St. Nick, is one of a widening list of Chinese products appearing on the shelves of Chinese shops in Thailand.

"Merchandise from Communist China began coming into Thailand about a year ago and is now to be found in all sections of the country. For the most part, the goods are of low quality and cheap. Fountain pens, for example, sell for only 30 cents. Large thermostype flasks encased in wicker bring one dollar, but the local press has reprinted stories from China telling about casualties suffered in the explosion of such flasks.

"Other China-made items include bicycles, sewing machines, radios, soap, harmonicas, padlocks, toothpaste, canned pineapples and beer. Also on sale are pickled Chinese lizards, the juice of which is recommended for virility."

Well, there was the answer. The mysterious disappearance of the Man on the Telephone Book had been solved. With ruffled wings and cable dragging, that latter-day version of Mercury had undoubtedly been whisked behind the (concluded on page 66)

Trade Mark Plot

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Bamboo Curtain to be retooled for a reappearance as the Spirit of Virility on a jar of pickled lizards. Where would it all end, I wondered. Would the new pony-sized Pegasus be rustled from his off-beat range to advertise some glorified version of the Moscow Mule? Would the half-clad Psyche be pressed into service as a badge for the Soviet League of Lady Shoplifters? Or, horrible to contemplate, would the trio be drafted en masse to help promote a popular new collectivist candy bar called The Three Profiteers?

Though a clear and present danger exists, I trust that cool heads and full glasses will prevail. We must bide our time in the sure knowledge that any system of government that fosters the production of untrustworthy flasks cannot long endure. While awaiting the day of reckoning, we have only to do what we can to protect our labels from further aggression. Or perhaps we shouldn't even try. Perhaps a little reciprocity in the matter of trade marks and brand names might serve to reduce East-West tensions. With Santa Claus Brand Rolled Oats already on the shelves of Bangkok, it mightn't be amiss to at least consider the possibilities Communist-bloc names might hold for the American businessman.

Among obvious starters we might try introducing Cossack-Cola, Kremlin of Wheat (with Old Khrush Kringle on the box) and Mao Tse-tung Gum (available in both spearminsk and pepperminsk flavors). N.K.V.D.'s might not be bad for a brand of long underwear, and it would be impossible to beat O.G.P.U. as a name for a new deodorant. Chou En-lai sounds like just the thing for opening clogged drains, even without the magic ingredient US, and might be introduced by means of a television series based on the adventures of Shepilov Cassidy.

Think, too, of what the manufacturers of ladies' harnesses could do with names like Cominform and Popular Front. Along the same line, the city of Brest-Litovsk is another plum waiting to be plucked. A very attractive campaign could no doubt be built around the slogan, "I dreamed I exceeded my quota in my Brest-Litovsk bra."

There's Malencough for annoying throat irritations, and Trotskies for problems of irregularity. Best of all, though, would be Grape-Nyets, the breakfast of Bolsheviks!

Only one small problem remains: who would buy the damned stuff?