Brand names that have become generic terms.

Okay, a fun little exercise. What brand names can you think of that have become the more common name for the product? I'll start with a few.

Frisbee - every flying disk gets called a Frisbee

Kleenex - no matter what brand of facial tissue

Coke - (regional) some places in the US have adopted "Coke" as any kind of carbonated, sweetened beverage ("What kind of Coke do you want?" "Diet Pepsi." "Okay, great!")

Frigidaire - at least, I have known older people to say "the beer's in the Frigidaire" even they have a Whirlpool

I know there are others. Fire away!

Xerox for copiers

And people unfortunately use the term iPhone instead of smart phone despite the fact that iOS is actually making up something like a fifth of the global unit market share for mobile devices.

Aspirin

Jacuzzi

Crock-Pot

Aspirin? Whoa, I didn't know that one!

Styrafoam

Bat-mite said:

some places in the US have adopted "Coke" as any kind of carbonated, sweetened beverage

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And they are wrong

q-tip
band-aid
estes rocket

Bandaid

Scotch Tape
Q-tips

A new one is "Netflix" which seems to be used as a verb meaning to stream, no matter which actual steaming service is being used.

Velcro?

Krazy glue

Vaseline.
Ketchup.

Google

Castsup?

Froogle?

Duck Tape

dirkDIRK said:

Google

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But in this case 99.99% of the time it is Google.

Channel Locks

Sawz All

Rainmaker said:

But in this case 99.99% of the time it is Google.

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For now. Even after google loses its hold over the world people will still use it as a generic for any search website.

Cresent wench

Vise-Grip

Nytrunner said:

Velcro?

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For sure, not too many folks say “hook and loop fastener” in normal conversation.

Regarding “Coke” as a generic for soda (bring it, pop people), I thought that was mostly around Atlanta where Coca Cola is headquartered. Frankly it still doesn’t make any sense to me as s generic term.

Xerox is becoming an interesting one. My wife said it to my daughter the other day, and I wondered if she (my daughter) had ever seen or used a genuine Xerox copier. I haven’t touched one myself in a pretty long time.

Less common but I think it probably applies: Jetway.

Skil Saw

a fridgidaire was an air conditioner, whirlpool washer, and hotpoint was an iron. more recently, a Personal Computer by IBM(international Booze Machine?)
Rex

Teflon

neil_w said:

For sure, not too many folks say “hook and loop fastener” in normal conversation.
[snip]
Less common but I think it probably applies: Jetway.

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Just to confirm what my friends already know about me being an @$$, I tend to use the proper generic terms in normal conversation. It throws a lot of people off who aren't used to it and has even led to some delightful conversations.

Having said that, I am guilty of using Jetway generically. I'll have to check on my next trip out of Logan to see if they do use Jetway brand passenger boarding bridges.

dirkDIRK said:

For now. Even after google loses its hold over the world people will still use it as a generic for any search website.

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As I told the Rocket Noob this past weekend, I use Bing to Google everything.

Im almot certain if you use bing to google you destroy ther internet. Id tread lightly.

Bing! That's funny. Didn't know it even still worked. I thought it went out with AskJeeves and other MS products like Zune!

Kevlar
Weed eater
Loctite
Saran wrap
Tupperware
Ziplock
Garmin for any handheld GPS

Marc_G said:

Bing! That's funny. Didn't know it even still worked. I thought it went out with AskJeeves and other MS products like Zune!

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Ask Jeeves! Now we're reminiscing! I loved that when it first came out.