"Gray" is not a nod to Red Bull's prominent use of the gray color in its packaging.
Examples of Bland-Name Product in comic books.
- Adventure Time: Ice King has a shop selling stereotyped punk fashion called "Lukewarm Subject", a parody of the real Hot Topic.
- Archie:
- In a story where Jughead eats at every restaurant in a 50-mile radius, Riverdale has a "Windy's" (Wendy's—The mascot character's just the same redheaded mascot with buck teeth.) And a "McDougals" (McDonalds).
- A well known fast food chain in the Archie universe is "Colonel Dandy's". Colonel Dandy is clearly a Colonel Saunders Expy.
- One comic was of Archie and his band taking part in a commercial shoot for "Burpsi-Cola". Weirdly, Burpsi seems to have a heated rivalry with the soft drink "7-Down", while in Real Life 7-Up is another PepsiCo product.
- Avengers Arena had Captain Britain refer to Facebook and Twitter as "Wastebook" and "Fritter". Doubly clever since it both gets around trademarks and gets across Captain Britain's disdain for them.
- Similarly, The Beano has Widl, which is a parody of Lidl right down to the logo.
- Bigfoot & Gray on the Run: The drink Gray is seen consuming cans of in his introduction, Gray Bull, is a blatant alien version of Red Bull.
- Captain Carter #2 has a panel filled with British Newspapers reporting on Peggy's return, all with instantly recognisable mastheads but different names, including the Daily Herald (Daily Mirror), Londoner (Metro), Daily News (Daily Express), Business Times (Financial Times), Morning Sentinel (Evening Standard), and some not quite visible papers based on the Daily Telegraph and the i.
- Daredevil: Matt Murdock's well-stocked tea cupboardnote contains boxes of Pwinings Ceylon Orange Peyol. Basically, the entire cupboard seems to be the result of combining a tea aficionado's sensibilities, a meticulous artist, and the enforced avoidance of direct brand references.
- Depending on the writer/artist/era, a lot of DC Comics, especially those aimed at teenagers (i.e., the "sidekick" books like Robin and Teen Titans) will have a number of these. Examples include "Sundollars" coffee, "Crocky the Dinosaur," Zesti Cola and its competitor, Soder Cola, the Heavy Stone Cafe, and, of course, "WcDonald's".
- Notably, The Martian Manhunter has a crippling addiction to "Chocos" cookies, which used to be a crippling Oreo addiction. He didn't change preferences, the writers just retconned this trope in.
- Zesti, Sundollars, Heavy Stone, and Crocky were all created by Chuck Dixon on the Bat-books. He also came up with Curtains '98 software, Winkyworld amusement park, and O'Shaunasseghy's burger bar (a Shout-Out to a Denny O'Neil pseudonym).
- Additionally, there are several brand names that change existing syllables to "Lex", such as Lex-Mart and Fed-Lex, implying that the names were changed when Lex Luthor bought the companies.
- In one Justice League International era storyline, Ice and Guy go on a date to see the "Ice-Capists" featuring the "Poppyseed Street Moppets".
- The New 52 Teen Titans series includes references to the social media website "Chirper", the video sharing site "Viewtube"... and, oddly enough, the real auction website eBay. "Chirper" has prominently featured since, including being used for Previously on… pages in Superman (Brian Michael Bendis).
- Young Justice members watch the Show Within a Show Wendy the Werewolf Stalker.
- The Batman Adventures had a mention of the producers of Centurion, Alerter Sisters.
- In New Teen Titans, Beast Boy had a brief career as a shapeshifting alien in Space Trek: 2022. A later reference would suggest Star Trek and Space: 1999 also exist in the DCU, and that Space Trek ended when the creators of those shows sued the production company.
- Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: In "Wonder World" 15 year old Princess Diana swims to the mainland and plays "Dance Dance Retribution" at an arcade with some other teens she befriended.
- Wonder Woman (1987) shows characters using FexLex for shipping, evidently the local Fed Ex equivalent is owned by Lex Luthor.
- In the second issue of Infinity, Inc., the titular not-yet-team heads to a "MacTavish's" for a late-night snack. The menu board in one of the backgrounds advertises a "MacBiggie" burger.
- In-universe advertising in Knight and Squire includes Red Gull energy drink (Red Bull), Hexo seasoning (Saxa) and the comic book Dreadnaught (Valiant, based on the logo and the cover showing a Steel Claw parody called the Steel Mitten). In #4, Beryl's mum's kitchen table has a bottle of PH brown sauce (HP). The newsreader in #6 works for The CBB.
- Robin (1993): Tim is seen drinking "Spite" soda a few times, and a scene in an O'Shaunasseghy's Spite in shown alongside some other amusingly tweaked brand names on a soda fountain.
- In the early New 52 era, Oliver Queen was reinvented as the head of a tech company called Q-Core. They made Q-Pods, Q-Pads, Q-Phones and Q-Boxes, which were frequently referenced in other titles.
- "Verner Bros" was first mentioned as one of the Mega Corps in O.M.A.C. (Jack Kirby was never averse to Biting-the-Hand Humor), then appeared in the mainstream DCU as the makers of the movie Blue Devil was appearing in when he got stuck in his devil suit. In OMAC, Verner's opponents in the Corporate Wars were International Communications and Commerce, or IC&C. (Ironically, in real life, AT&T now own Warner Media.)
- A Superman and Batman story in the 1998 DC Universe Holiday Bash has a flashback in which Clark was excited to get a "Captain Adventure" action figure for Christmas, with Pa Kent apologising that he couldn't get all the Justice Society costumes for it. This is a riff on Captain Action, an action figure that could be outfitted as various superheroes (including Superman and Batman!)
- The main story in Justice League Quarterly #6 revolves around a popular property-buying board game called Land Baron with squares based on streets in Seaside City.
- Issue 55 of the Peter Milligan series of Shade, the Changing Man has a panel showing a chocolate bar called "Bershey's", a blatant play on Hershey's.
- In a Lew Stringer Doctor Who Magazine spoof comic strip describing the secret origin of DWM itself, Dez Skinn notices the Doctor's adventures are no longer published in Televisual Comic (TV Comic) and when Marvel try to make the Doctor into a superhero, he instead offers the idea to Wayfleet Magazines (Fleetway), publishers of Leopard (Lion) featuring Robot Alfie (Robot Archie), Coo! (Cor!), Foggy for Girls (Misty), and a just-visible comic with a giant snake on the cover (Whizzer and Chips with Sid's Snake). Sadly, Wayfleet miss the point even more, wanting to make it either a war comic like Angry Battle Picture Weekly (Battle and Action) or a very young children's comic like Nicey Nice Stories (Tiny Tots) (and when it fails, they'll merge it with an existing one), so Dez goes back to Marvel UK.
- Several Doctor Who (Titan) issues include references to a "Prohibited Sphere" comic and SF bookshop in London (and, it turns out, extra terrestrially), a play on the main London location of the UK's Forbidden Planet comic and SF bookshop chain (which, incidentally, is owned by the same company that currently publishes the Doctor Who comic book.)
- Empowered has lots of this: "YouToob", "Grant-a-Wish Foundation", you get the idea.
- Robbie Reyes, Marvel's latest iteration of the Ghost Rider, is referenced in an in-universe newspaper article as driving a "Dotch Charter." [1]
- In Gaslighters, protagonist Nightmare drives an electric car called the "Nikola".
- A Horndog strip features a "Sharkie" marker.
- Incandescence features "Happie Pigs" and "McRonald's" references in the first issue.
- Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four Issue #44 had Johnny leaving a Rick Donald's, while Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes Issue #8 had Captain America see a Wack Donald's among other things the first time he saw New York.
- In Max Ride: First Flight #1, amongst the pile of stuffed animals in AngelÂ’s room is an unnamed Captain Ersatz of a Care Bear can be seen but with a symbol on its forehead instead of its stomach.
- Memetic is based on a deadly meme that turns people into violent psychos, so it heavily references the internet and social media, with sites such as "Stumblr", "Raddit" and "Gaggle" (Tumblr, Reddit and Google). Oddly enough, only the logos are modified, but the names in the balloons are the real deal.
- In Monsters Unleashed Vol 2 Issue #8, the trope of giant monsters fighting Evil Knockoffs of themselves is discussed, as seen in the classic monster movies "Mechani-Goom Conquers the World", "Terror of Mecha-Gorgilla" and "Zzutak versus Robo Zzutak".
- Mortadelo y Filemón: Commonly for the lulz, a portmanteau of a well-name brand with some other unrelated word - "Pescadillac" combines luxury-brand Cadillac with "pescadilla", Spanish for whiting, which is not expensive. Sometimes only some letters are changed to ease a Spaniard's pronunciation.
- In The Multiversity, the stories of Earth-7 and Earth-8 are published in other universes by Major Comics.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): The Equestria Girls Holiday Special has MyStable, a parody of MySpace. Why they chose that instead of Facebook is anyone's guess, especially because you can still make a horse pun out of it (Facehoof is the most popular one).
- German comic strip Ottifanten uses Würger King (with a W that looks like the arches turned upside-down), which is both this and a Punny Name (würgen = to retch).
- Used for satirical purposes in Prez, which is set twenty years in the future and depicts the extensions of current trends. People struggling to pay their sky-high medical bills are shown turning to a specialized crowdfunding site called "Sickstarter".
- In Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers' phone is made by a brand called Samsnug.
- In Silverblade, Belinda drops the reel of film showing Jonathan shifting forms in his sleep off at a "Photomax" kiosk to be developed: an expy of the then ubiquitous Fotomat booths.
- The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: In the second miniseries, the Simpsons are pretending to be life-sized Simpsons action figures that Fry bought from eBuy in order to avoid being arrested by Smitty and URL.
- Sinister Dexter mentions My Face, among others. Also Basrtsucks Coffee, which could double up as an Unusual Euphemism.
- Superlópez: Companies tend to be renamed, for example Penchesa (Endesa) or Teleafónica (this one doubles as a Punny Name, a mix of telecommunications company Telefónica and the Spanish word for "aphonic"), and the city is paralyzed every time the big soccer derby between Parchelona (FC Barcelona) and Fespañol (RCD Espanyol) takes place.
- In the comic book adaptation of the 2007 Transformers live action movie, Sam Witwicky tries to sell his grandfather's glasses via "ePay". This continued in the later Alliance miniseries, which briefly featured two of the All Spark-animated robots from the movie; Dispensor, the Mountain Dew vending machine, was shown shooting cans of "Mountain IDW" (a Shout-Out to the comic's publisher), while the Xbox 360 robot was re-labeled a "Y-Box".
- Ultimate Marvel
- In Ultimate Spider-Man, the search engine used by Peter Parker is called Goggle. Which is, sadly, an actual website that infects you with all manner of spyware.
- Ultimatum: The X-Men pass near a cinema with the image of a lion and a film named "The Loon King".
- The Ultimates: The scene of Bruce Banner in Manhattan includes a sign that looks similar to The Powerpuff Girls.
- Meanwhile, back in the regular Marvel Universe, the name "McBurger's" is used whenever someone needs to refer to a burger chain, and there is a frequently villainous oil company by the name of "Roxxon Oil". Stark Industries is their general replacement for Apple (so StarkPhone -> iPhone etc. and yes there is an app for everything). My Little Pony translates to Magical Pony Adventures (or rarely Pony Pals), YouTube to MeTube, Instagram to Pictagram, Tumblr to Yamblr etc. (although in some cases they do use real brand names, such as Red Bull and Google). So does anyone want to guess what MovieTropes dot com is a stand-in for?
- The Drunken Bakers in Viz do most of their shopping at a supermarket called Adld. Not only does this combine the names of cheap supermarkets Aldi and Lidl, it also neatly sums up what the Bakers buy there.
- In X-Force vol. 1, there is the news channel SNN instead of CNN.
- The Marvel Universe has two versions of Nevada's Burning Man festival: the Colossal Exploding Man festival in Texas (seen in X-Force) and the Burning Tree festival in Utah (seen in X-Men).
- Youngblood (2017) introduces an app called "Help", which is Uber mixed with Yelp, allowing people in trouble to contact a nearby superhero, and afterwards provide them a out of five-star rating based on how much they rated the rescue and the hero.
