Stuff I like #1: The Word Frappuccino

How else would you combine the words “Fraport” and “Cappuccino”?

I like going to non-starbucks coffee shops and ordering a Frappucino. I’m really not trying to be pretentious, but frappuccino is just one of those words that I love to use.

“Pass me a Kleenex”, “Xerox me a copy”, “put on some Chapstick”. These are all brand names that made the magical step to becoming regular nouns for the things they embody. This is what every product hopes to achieve, but there really is no formula for it. The starbucks frappucino wasn’t even the first time someone threw in tons of sugar and milk and flavoring into watered down caffine. However, I still adopted “frappucino” into my lexicon as referring to any cold, sugary, blended, coffee based byproduct. I’ve heard a few others try to counter with their own exotic names: Frappe, Ice Blended Drink, Moolatte, etc. but all of these, I found, suck ass. Ice Blended Drink belongs to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, which is just kind of sad because at least here in SoCal, they are Starbucks’ main corporate competitor. Thus, anytime I go to another coffee shop (which granted, isn’t very often, they all require a bit of a drive, starbucks for me is a block away) despite how carefully I look at the menu, I usually forget whatever name they gave their icy caffine sugar bath and call it a mocha frappucino. Occasionally I will get a blank stare, wondering what the hell I ordered, but most the time I will just get a smirk and a polite correction. I guess it’s a bit of an insult to the smaller places, but in reality, Starbucks coined a term, then were dicks and made it a trademark.

And that’s all a little ironic. Starbucks has all these posters and literature talking about their free trade coffee and how they help the environment, but when it comes to intellectual property they are out for blood. They may be out giving free beans or houses, or houses made out of coffee beans or whatever to people around the world, acting like coffee is this magical bean that makes the world function (well given my addiction to it, maybe it is), but it would be nice to see a corporation, just for once, show some good will and give us a word. It would be a great PR move!