Episode Details

What links a frozen treat, a Swedish pop band, a diesel locomotive and a Brazilian footballer? This deep dive reads a single Wikipedia disambiguation page for popsicle as a map of how one brand name escaped its corporate origins.

We explain genericized trademarks and the risk of genericide, when a brand becomes the everyday word for a whole product category. Then we follow popsicle through music from Jan and Dean in 1963 to a 1990s Swedish band and 2000s artists, onto the MKT E7 locomotive and Popsicle Peak on Vancouver Island, and into Brazil, where footballer Jose Manuel Ricardo was known by the Portuguese word for popsicle.

• What a genericized trademark is and why companies must police how the public uses their brand
• How genericide can strip a company of exclusive rights to its own word
• Why musicians from 1960s surf rock to 2000s indie acts used popsicle as aesthetic shorthand
• How nicknaming heavy machinery and mountains projects familiar comforts onto imposing things
• Which of today's trademarked names might become the next popsicle