11 Brands So Famous They’ve Became Product Names and How They Came

There are, around the world and also in Brazil, a series of products that we are used to identifying by the best-known brand and the name ended up being in the mouth of the people. After all, who never made the market list and wrote: Leite Moça, Gillette, Leite Ninho and Havaianas? This association is common, because they are usually the first brands that emerged or that had a very “bubbly” advertisement.

O awesome.club loves to bring you curiosities, that’s why we list 11 famous brands that have become, for one reason or another, synonymous with some products of our daily lives.

The American inventor King Camp Gillette was the creator of the first and revolutionary thin, disposable stamped steel razor blade and, above all, low cost. He saw, in the shaving routine of the man of the time, an opportunity to create something that didn’t need to be sharpened daily. After five years of coming up with the idea, he was finally able to manufacture his product.

A good marketing technique was when the company decided to supply millions of razors and razors to American soldiers who went to World War I. This invention became so well known that on the company’s 25th anniversary Gillette wrote: “There is no other article for individual use so universally known or widely distributed. In my travels, I met him in the northernmost city of Norway and in the heart of the Sahara Desert.”

The cornstarch brand Maizena was created in the 1840s in the United States and, despite being American, the name is derived from the word maize, which in Spanish means corn. In 2000, the company became part of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, but the brand had already been part of the lives of Brazilians for over 100 years.

Although today it is synonymous with foods such as porridge, sauces and biscuits, flour was also used in the laundry to iron clothes. Today it has thousands of uses, such as removing stains from clothes, preventing baby diaper rash and using it as a dry shampoo. In addition, starch is also used in the pharmaceutical and textile industry and is in the composition of many products in our daily lives.

Earle Dickson, who was an employee of Johnson & Johnson, always found his wife with cuts and burns due to her inexperience in housework. As he was the one who made the dressings, he ended up having the idea of ​​putting gauze and cotton on adhesive tapes and leaving them ready for the woman to use. The idea reached the Johnson brothers, who soon began producing the first industrialized dressing, and Dickson was promoted to vice president of the company.

The bandage was not very popular at first, but in World War II, millions of samples of Band-Aids were shipped by the company to Europe. It wasn’t until the 1950s that stickers began to have designs and became more successful. Today, the product is manufactured for various skin tones and, over the internet, you can even buy a personalized dressing.

The product’s history began with the Hoagland brothers who became partners to produce baking powder together. Strong marketing, with sponsorship of cookbooks and stories, made the product a success. An example is the book “The Little Gingerbread Man” which told the story of a king’s ban, and how Johnny Gingerbread saved the town of Cookery Land with recipes made with baking powder.

The product became well known because of the practicality when preparing some types of food. Before, to make such delicacies, yeast was made at home from the fermentation of ingredients such as fruits, vegetables or grains, and it didn’t always work. 18th century bakers used, among other ingredients, potassium carbonate which was made from caustic soda and wood ash or ammonia.

According to the brand’s own website, they were inspired by a type of Japanese sandal made of rice straw and fabric, called Zōri; even the texture of the top of the slipper resembles the grains of this cereal. In the 1990s, the trend arose to invert the sole to have the product with a single color and so the manufacturer had the idea of ​​producing monocolor models.

At the end of the 2000s, the most famous sandal in Brazil was exported to several countries, even having space in shop windows, magazines and newspapers around the world. Today it is nationally known and sold in over 80 countries. The brand was widely copied and even made an advertising campaign so that consumers would buy only the “legitimate” ones.

Condensed milk was developed by American Gail Borden who experimented with evaporating some of the milk’s water and adding sugar to increase shelf life. The product became popular in the world and among soldiers during the American Civil War and World War II, for being a food that did not spoil easily and for being very caloric.

The product arrived in Brazil in 1890 under the name Milkmaid and, over time, consumers themselves named it “milk of the young lady”, because of the peasant woman on the packaging, and the company decided to adopt that name. Research carried out by the brand confirms that eight cans of this condensed milk are currently sold per second in the country, despite being the most expensive of all available on the market.

Swiss chemist Henri Nestlé developed a way to produce powdered milk in the late 1860s and also went on to produce milk chocolate. Almost a century later, Leite Ninho was created (1944), and the instant version (which dissolves easier) appeared two decades later.

Brazilians already consumed some products from the brand before the arrival of Leite Ninho. With the shortage of consumer goods — including liquid milk — at the end of the 2nd World War, queues formed to purchase this product, so Nestlé decided to run a campaign that said: “Don’t get in line! For those who use NEST there is no milk problem. No queues, no fears about quality, no unforeseen events”.

In an experiment to make a type of oat-based breakfast cereal, the Kellogg brothers came up with the recipe for corn flakes that are still successful on tables all over the world. In the early 20th century, Will Keith Kellogg opened his first factory, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Today the product is sold in more than 180 countries and is one of the best known brands on the planet.

The character Tony emerged as a marketing strategy to show how the brand is modern and concerned with the health of consumers. The personification of the athlete tiger was purposeful and as time went on it grew stronger to represent the energy and strength that the cereal could provide. He also tried to show a model of the perfect family, which the consumer could obtain by feeding on the product.

The product was developed by Carl Hahn and Heinz Mittag, who wanted a tampon that could be used without an applicator, as the Tampax model with an applicator was already sold in some countries. The idealist duo approached gynecologist Judith Esser-Mittag who created the final design. The creation was named OB, which in German is “ohne binde”, which means “no towel”, since sanitary pads in German are called “Damenbind🇧🇷 The product began to be manufactured in 1950.

The tampon came to give women more freedom, as it can be used in the pool and on the beach, and some women find it more efficient than the common tampon. The name of the product was chosen for being discreet, as it was created in a time when it was, in a way, embarrassing to buy items for feminine hygiene. It is so well known worldwide that it has become synonymous with tampon in most parts of the world.

The brand is a reference in eyewear – the name means “banish the sun” – and was widely used by American aviation pilots. In fact, the story goes that US Army Colonel John A. Macready teamed up with Bausch & Lomb to jointly create lightweight eyeglasses with impact-resistant lenses that filtered out interference from the blue and white of the sky, improve the details and not blur during the flight, which is where the Ray-Ban Aviator was born.

The aviator model became recommended for pilots, precisely because it blocked the reflection of the sun that caused headaches and nausea in these professionals. The brand became quite popular when Hollywood artists started using it, such as actors James Dean, Peter Fonda and Marilyn Monroe — and also when it was used in films like Top Gun: Indomitable Aces and risky business🇧🇷

With the outbreak of World War II, the US Army wanted to make a light reconnaissance vehicle with certain specifications. In the end, the Willys, Bantam and Ford companies together developed what we know today as a “jeep”. This car was mass produced during and after the war and many versions of the vehicle saw both military and civilian use. Today the Jeep brand still manufactures models of sport utility vehicles.

The word “jeep” has become a catch-all term for Jeep-inspired vehicles that are made to ride in hard-to-reach places. In Iceland, for example, any SUV (sport utility vehicle) model car has been called a ‘Jeppi’ since WWII. In Brazil, the brand became a dictionary entry with the Portuguese version of the brand (jeep), with the same idea of ​​a car that can travel in rough places.

Did you like to know a little more about these brands that have become a reference for us? Do you have any more that you think should be on the list or even for us to compose a second version? Tell us in the comments.