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Bland-Name Product

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But I prefer Bepis Cola.

Peter: Hey, if we pass a McDaniels or a Burger Queen, let's hop out.
Quagmire: Oh, that's right, we're on television...
Joe: Oh, I'd love a flame-broiled Bopper!
Quagmire: So frustrating. We all ''know'' what we're talking about...
— Family Guy, "Cool Hand Peter"

When you want to refer to a well-known brand name, but the legal department is advising you to avoid using trademarks in your show, you can just change a few letters around to thinly disguise the brand name (Coca-Cola → Coke Colan) or snowclone the name (Dr Pepper → Mr Topper) or use the same color scheme.

In some cases, the logo itself will be changed to something which reflects the change in name. (For example, if "Mitsubishi" = "three diamonds" then "Mitsuboshi" will have a logo with three stars,*  and "Yotsubishi" a logo with four diamonds.)

Contrast Shoddy Knockoff Product (actually trying to rip people off with names similar to brand names) and Product Placement (when the real product name is used extensively due to an endorsement deal with the company in question). If the reason for product name alteration is not to avoid copyright, see Fictional Counterpart. See also Brand X, when generic names are used, and Product Displacement, for when brand names are blocked out, blurred, or otherwise redacted.

Subtropes

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    WcDonald's 
WcDonald's or a variant thereof often appears in anime productions (and a few western shows and games), with the McDonald's golden arches flipped vertically.

    Advertising 
  • One UK advert for Argos shows their mascot blue alien characters ordering online from Amazin-stuff.com. It's not advertising online ordering, but why you should "Argos" it instead of ordering it online. Which is just ordering something from Argos, really.
  • A Sprite commercial shows an ad for a Jooky soft drink.
    • We also got "Sun Fizz" from the same company.

    Asian Animation 
  • Simple Samosa: In the episode "Jalebi's Birthday", Jalebi uses a Google Maps parody called "Gargle Maps" to locate Vada when he asks her for help getting off of a non-working escalator in a mall.

    Anime and Manga 
A general note: It's as easy for a Japanese artist or animator to just change one letter of the Roman alphabet and get away with it as it would be for a Western artist or animator to switch out a single kanji.

  • Products from "Somy" (and their "Pandycam"), "Mikon" and other similar "manufacturers" can be found in many anime.
  • Seiyu, Walmart's Japanese branch, shows up in several anime and manga, such as Hey Yu in Shakugan no Shana, Heiya in Kodomo no Jikan or Seiyo in Kemeko Deluxe!.
  • Ah! My Goddess, has "Somy" and many others, including "Poca-Cola", on which Belldandy gets wasted, "Dack Daniels" whiskey and "God Year" tires.
  • Ai Kora has one chapter which features Nanako Sideway, a shopping plaza based on the real-life shopping plaza (and otaku haven) Nanako Broadway.
  • In Ai Yori Aoshi Miyabi's car is a BMW Z3, only the BMW logo is red instead of blue. They also get out a "Twinsters" party game in one episode. They also have "Starfocks Coffee" restaurants.
  • Akumetsu has such gems as Weekly Tsop and Starbunnys Coffee.
  • In Angel Beats!, Computers all run on Macrosoft's Winding XO system. Seems like they got an actual English-speaker to help with those puns. (The logo is a spiral, because it's "winding" as in "winding up a cord." It doesn't alliterate with "windows.")
  • In Cat Planet Cuties there are Somy, OIAV, and PanaX (Possibly a spoof of Panasonic and Pentax).
    • The OVA has "Nahapoly" (Monopoly), "Umo" (Uno), "Tracker" (Twister), and boxes showing games that resemble Life and Perfection.
  • In Anohana the protagonists have a nostalgic fondness for the game Nokemon. The version they play is very clearly based on FireRed and LeafGreen, complete with the kids having played them on GBA SP looking systems. It is briefly discussed that something called Dojimon exists as well.
  • Azumanga Daioh has "abidas" (adidas) and "Rocky" (Pocky), and Chiyo and Osaka end up working at Magnetron Burger, whose logo is a dead McDonalds giveaway. (Amusingly, McDonald's is actually mentioned in an early strip about Osakan regional differences. Apparently Azuma didn't decide to play it safe until later.) In a strange twist of real life imitating art, Pocky is indeed sold as "Rocky" in some South-East Asian countriesnote , although the original "Pocky" is available at import stores.
  • In the opening to Baccano!, it's possible to see chocolate bars by "Herseey's" and "Nostle".
  • Black Lagoon has multiple, the most noticeable of which would be the "Heireken" (Heineken) beer the protagonists all drink. Yet there's no issue with them referring to Bacardi, nor is the GTO tag hidden on Benny's car in some shots. Heck, Revy's guns are Beretta M92F customs, which are prominently displayed in the opening sequence and mentioned at least once.
  • In Bakuman。 manga it's averted, where the mangaka main characters hope to get their work published in Shueisha's Shonen Jump magazine, and submit works for Akamaru Jump. Played straight in the anime, when it's Yueisha, Shonen Jack and NEXT, respectively. The titles of the manga the characters mention aren't changed, however.
    • Played straight with other brands in the Manga, too. Moritaka and Akito are meeting in front of a Rowson convenience store. Gets partially Lost in Translation in the dialog, as the Japanese spelling of Lawson and Rowson is the same (ローソン).
  • In Battle Club, there is the restaurant Kanna Miller's instead of Anna Miller's.
  • BECK anime has many examples of "rock bland" names. Including NC5 (MC5), Pixis (The Pixies), Ramonne (The Ramones) Red Hot Chili Poppers, DXM (DMX), etc. Also a plethora of brand name knock-offs on signs in the city. Subverted slightly when characters refer to specific instruments: a 'Strat' (Fender Stratocaster) or 'Telecaster' (also made by Fender), and Gibson's 'Les Paul' - however, no one mentions Fender or Gibson by name; the actual names/logos on guitars are obscured.
  • Beelzebub. Oga has a PlayStation 5.
  • Bleach shows a "Handin Donuts" sign at one point when Tatsuki is searching for Orihime, instead of "Dunkin' Donuts."
  • Blood Blockade Battlefront has Peiniken (Heiniken, but the logo shows whiskey), Dogimo's (which Leo works for), Codac, Kentudgy Fried Chicken (KDFC), Yo!Tube and Hainz.
  • Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai has Largehard consoles (Microsoft) and PSP's: Playing State Portables as rival games systems. Also Megasonic air conditioning.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun has a laptop with "Designed for Macindows EXP: Macindows BST Capable" and "Outel Cora i7 outside" stickers. Truly an abomination worthy of the end of days.
  • Chaos;Head. ...where to begin? Deluoode, Taboo!, Animeight, @Channel, MewTube, McDynald's...The Other Wiki becomes "We-Key Pedophilia". Surprisingly, Coca-Cola remains unchanged.
  • An episode of Chibi Maruko-chan has the titular character take a flight on an airline named Pan Up with the logo of (now defunct) airline Pan Am.
  • In CLANNAD, the early drama club room has a cardboard box for a Somy PC laying around.
  • Comic Girls:
    • The cast's publisher Bunhousha is created by swapping the first two kanji of the manga's publisher Houbunsha.
    • Kaoruko brings with her a Rintiq tablet.
  • Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou and its Horiz ketchup.
  • Cowboy Bebop featured "Pippu" cola, whose color scheme was exactly the same as that of Pepsi.
    • Also, in "Heavy Metal Queen", V.T. is seen drinking "Boofeaters" Extra Dry Gin, with the rest of the label unchanged.
    • Rocket Noodles, instead of Cup Noodles. Gives a whole new meaning to instant noodles.
  • In one of the extras in the Da Capo TV Series, Miharu has a desktop PC whose OS is "Windoors 2000", and she surfs a website called "Ahoo!" (Japanese site, hence its url ends in ahoo.co.jp) where she does online auctions.
  • Darker Than Black 2, episode 11 has StartBoxs (sic) Coffee.
    • The original also had "McDonness Burger" and "Lufanser" airplanes. Which makes the Pizza Hut billboards all over the place seem even stranger.note  The dub, however, replaced all the Pizza Hut logos with "Pizza Slice", creating another example of this trope.
  • DEAD Tube has Machiya, the male protagonist, carry a Sonv camcorder, it's a clearly one of Sony's HDR series of Handycams; it's used to film murders.
  • DearS episode 12 has a "Zutar Bacchus" coffee shop chain.
  • Death Note:
    • There is "Gentle!" instead of Google and Yahoo (it must be for refined internet users), Eighteen instead of Seventeen magazine, "Fanto" instead of Fanta, and "Fanasonic" and "Metsubishi" instead of Panasonic and Mitsubishi giant TV sets.
    • And, amusingly: "Mild Turkey".
    • The manga has "Panasonio" videotapes.
    • Also To-oh University, instead of Tokyo. This is despite the story still taking place mostly in Tokyo.
    • TV-wise, it manages to have both NKK and NHN as blanded versions of NHK.
    • There's also a "CAZIO" mini-TV in the "potato chip" scene.
  • in Detective Conan, Pocari Sweat became "Hocari Sweat", Sony became "ONY" and Denny's became "Donny's"
    • The anime has Ran and Sonoko going to see a film called "Ossan's Eleven".
  • Akira is seen purchasing a "CalorieBuddy" at a convenience store in episode 3 of DEVILMAN crybaby.
  • Another The Devil Is a Part-Timer! example has Emi work as customer service for "Docodemo", a clear parody of Japanese telecom giant Docomo. Also, across the street from MgRonald's, there is a Sentucky Fried Chicken, managed by Sariel.
    • They also go shopping at UniSlo (Uniqlo) and Maou threatens to sell Urushihara's "Pasta" game (PSP) at Book-On (Book-off). Other restaurants and brands show up as well.
  • Digimon Tamers has one episode with a mom telling her daughter that "Bernard the Dinosaur" is on.
    • Digimon Adventure did this a lot. In one episode, you can see a vending machine that sells "Koca Kola".
    • The follow-up, Digimon Adventure 02, had a "Wac" computer in one episode. Izzy in Adventure was also fond of his laptop emblazoned with a pineapple logo.
    • The first and second movies feature signs labled "Factory Mark". This is a reference to Japanese supermarket chain, Family Mart.
  • Don't Become an Otaku, Shinozaki-san! presents a lot. Most commonly we see PrePure in place of PreCure. When setting up a new computer, we also see their version of Windows is "Wenby's".
  • In the 2005 series of Doraemon, Nobita is often shown reading "GoroGoro Comics".
  • Averted in Dragon Ball Z. The legendary farmer with a shotgun owns a truck that has the name "Chevrolet" on its rear. Played straight later on, where Mr. Satan rigs a "GamePoy" to explode.
    • Dragon Ball Super has a weird instance of this with "GodTube", which is apparently what divine beings like the Kaioshin watch instead of YouTube. Gowasu even cracks a joke about wanting to become a GodTuber. The Zenos also use a GodPad to keep track of who got eliminated in the Tournament of Power.
  • Dramacon OEL manga has this in spades. "Mcburger Queen," "Mangapop," "Daylodge" and "Taco Hut" appear prominently, as well as references to fake anime such as "Sailing Moon".
    • Taco Hut may be a sly reference to the fact that Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are both managed and operated by Yum! Brands and in many places operate co-branded stores.
    • There's also Pawky, which is an entertaining bonus joke for literary buffs; Half-Metal Alchemist, Fruity Basket, and Wolf's Reign.
    • Mangapop becomes confusing because Dramacon was distributed by Tokyopop (and the rights were tangled up in Tokyopop's collapse, which is why the promised fourth volume of Dramacon never materialized), and thus there was no trademark to avoid.
  • Durarara!!:
    • The series is full of Bland Name Products for various advertisements, billboards, and products seen around Tokyo, usually misspellings of real brands: Yohoo!, Amezon, Yo!Tube, etc. Mikado buys an "NEG" computer that runs "Mindows 7", its boot screen contains a logo for "Wbunte" (a parody of Ubuntu)
    • In episode 11, when Shizuo is talking about the meaning of life (or something), in the background there's a sign with a man on it who looks suspiciously like Colonel Sanders.
    • Dotachin shares a drink of Red Snake energy drink with Mikado at one point.
    • The second episode has a billboard for "Yahaha" motorcycles.
  • Eureka Seven does this (a lot) with, among others, "Rersi Cola" (which also sounds like "RC Cola", for a double whammy) and "Smickers" bars.
  • Excel Saga has Nabeshin driving a "Mitsubibi Lancer." They also watch news reports on an SQNY television. The "Next episode" buffers take place in front of a giant "20th Century FQX" logo.
    • The backgrounds of lots of episodes have these. Picari Sweat (Pocari Sweat), Loazon (Lawson), and "33 Ice Cream" (Baskin Robbins is more commonly known in Japan as "31 Ice Cream") are just a few examples.
  • Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid
    • The opening has Kurz looking through a dirty magazine with a hot babe on it titled "Play Ball."
    • Kaname gets a "Pizza But" ad in her mail, before the current fad of Pizza hut sponsorship.
    • The original series had Bocari Sweat (Pocari Sweat) and Heibeken (Heineken) beer. Oddly, the Product Placement of Budweiser remains intact
  • In Fushigi Yuugi, Miaka gives some "Creen Gum" to Tamahome (while keeping the "Lotte" part intact) and later in a flashback shows her using a "Pontax" digicam.
  • The Future GPX Cyber Formula series has some actual brand names put into ads, but there are some of them like these such as "Comel" (Camel cigarettes) and "Umited Celors of Pemetton" (Benetton clothing). And there was a racing team based on the clothing company in the '90s, which happened around the time series was made.
  • Genshiken has the group going to a doujinshi sale convention called "Comifes" (Comiket).
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
    • Batou faces robotic dogs made by "Tonda" (using the same typeface as Honda).
    • In the wake of the first Laughing Man incident, Starchild Coffee came into business, using a modified version of the Laughing Man smiling face for their logo.
  • Girlish Number gets kind of weird with it—despite being clearly shown on-screen as "BINE" (a riff on LINE), it's introduced as "that chat app everyone is using now" and is only referred to using similar phrases instead of characters just using its fictional name.
  • Gintama has plenty of this in the Bentendo Owee arc. Aside from the titular system, you've got Hijikata berating Okita and Kondo for being fans of the Zega Creamcast and Zony respectively, and the Yorozuya gang and the Shinsengumi competing against each other at Bakiboki Memorial, Nobunaga's Regurgitation, and Dragon Hunter 3.
    • A later arc has the gang playing the MMORPG Monkey Hunter in an attempt to locate some aliens who turned them into screwdrivers.
    • The diner that the Yorozuya trio and others frequently meet at is called Tenny's.
  • Go Shogun: Yatta-la Kernagul wants to open a chain of fried chicken restaurants called "Kernagul's Fried Chicken" and a hamburger chain called "KerDonald's".
  • Brynhildr in the Darkness episode 9 has "Rich(m)ond Hotel".
  • Happy Lesson had "Windiis XXXP", and "Crocrosoft Mord", as well as the usual "Pony" televisions.
  • in the Haruhi Suzumiya anime, "Espon" laptops appear and the characters regularly eat at 'WcDonald's'.
    • The latter seems somewhat odd since during one outdoor scene, the background shows what is unmistakably a Sunkus convenience store...
      • This might be subtly lampshaded in "The Misadventures of Mikuru Asahina", which at the end says essentially: "This product is a work of fiction. Oh, except the store endorsements! Those are real. Please shop there."
    • Actually averted by the time the movie The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya rolls around. At one point, a computer boots up and we the startup screen for Windows 95 - which gets a few good seconds devoted to it, of course. They even used the Windows 95 startup noise. See for yourself.
  • The Hatsukoi Limited manga has a fun one: among Enomoto Yuu'spl many hobbies is reading Shonen Zump magazine.
    • Also: "Chupa Chups" —> "Chip Chops".
  • Hayate the Combat Butler has a tendency to do this, given its sheer volume of Shout Outs. The most obvious example is the Ai-Dollar-Master video game in Episode 20.
    • There are also "Pony" televisions and "Seako" clocks.
    • The last episode of season 2 is a ~15 minute, disaster-ridden search for a box of 'Packy'
  • Hell Girl has people using the Deegle.com and "Mahoo" search engine to find the Hell Correspondence website.
  • Hen Zemi TV series episode 2 has a console game "Pinal Mantasy"
  • In Hidamari Sketch:
    • Hiro has a Pony (Sony) television.
    • Nori's computer has a Shaftsoft Wonders operating system. (The logo is four colored squares, straight, not wavy, and rotated 45 degrees with the upper right squares shifted to the upper left. The green and blue squares are swapped, and there's a lighter green square where the yellow would be.)
    • She also has a Furbo (Furby).
  • In Higurashi: When They Cry, Rena finds a Kenta-kun doll in the town landfill, and there is a restaurant called "KCF" that the Kenta-kun doll came from. Guess who Kenta-kun looks like.
  • Himouto! Umaru-chan Several. NcDonald for McDonalds, Zonama for Amazon, Gapcom for Capcom, Batsune Migu for Hatsune Miku, Jun piece for One Piece...
  • in The iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia, "Puchy" instead of "Pocky".
  • The Idolmaster - Miki's headphones are a Somy, Chihaya lives near a Burger Queen, the camera Yoshizawa uses is a Qanon, among others.
  • I Dream of Mimi: At the beginning of Access 5, we see a PlayStar by Sany.
  • Ikkitousen has one character shown sending a text message on a "Sany Ericssan" cell phone.
  • Inazuma Eleven Ares no Tenbin has two soccer teams, Zeus and Minodouzan, sponsored by God Bull (complete with the motto "It gives you wings") and Hecom note  respectively.
  • Initial D, in he first season, the word "Trueno" (in the front of the hero's car) is spelled as "Toreno". This eventually changed when Toyota allowed them to use the AE86 Sprinter Trueno's proper name.
    • Maybe Toyota wanted Manga/Initial D to stop advertising Ford Torinos?
    • The dialogue also usually referred to the car as the "hachi-roku" ("eight-six"), a popular nickname for the AE86, and the name "Trueno" was seldom (if ever) used.
      • Possibly because the name was used on several generations of later models, which were FWD and therefore of little interest to drifters?
  • Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi has Dr. Cinnamon.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4 features the convenience store Owson, modified from the name of ubiquitous Japanese conbini Lawson. For the manga's 25th anniversary, a Lawson in Araki's hometown Sendai (which is the basis of the setting in Part 4) was even remade into an Owson. Part 4 also has mention of a Western-style restaurant chain called Jonny's, a play on Jonathan's, a popular chain in Japan.note 
    • In Part 3, an Orangutan reads Playbop, instead of Playboy.
    • Also averted, with a 7-Up sign in part 3 and a Pepsi sign in part 4.
  • Kagewani has TomTube for Youtube.
  • Episode 8 of Kakegurui references a pop idol's success on "YourTube".
  • K-On! has an electric screwdriver made by Ranosanic.
  • Kamen no Maid Guy features at least one episode with a "Meido" laptop, with a logo patterned after Sony's Vaio.
  • Kara no Kyoukai
    • Fukan Fuukei ("Overlooking View"). The first scene involves Mikiya visiting Shiki and giving her a cup of "Häagan-Dazs" strawberry ice cream. Averted with the Volvic bottled water she keeps in her fridge.
    • Mujun Rasen ("Paradox Spiral") features the strawberry "Häagan-Dazs" again, though it's not close enough to read, and a "Somsomg" (i.e., Samsung) billboard on top of a building.
    • Satsujin Kousatsu ("Murder Speculation") Part 2. The first scene includes Mikiya visiting Shiki and giving her a can of Georgia Emerald Mountain Blend, a brand of Japanese canned coffee. During the close-up on the label, however, Shiki's fingers are partially covering the letters, so this is most likely an aversion but technically may be playing it straight.
  • In the Kagaku na Yatsura manga, there is the snack Bocky instead of Pocky.
  • Kill la Kill has REVOCS, the clothing brand owned by the Kiryuin family and a riff on athletic clothing brand Reebok, as well as "Cadiva" chocolate.
  • Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien shows tickets for Titamic.
  • King of Thorn features two computer-related ones: at one point we see a 'Mindows' (Windows) operating system, and the computer that Zeus conjures up is a 'Bell' (Dell).
  • In the japanese version of episode 89 of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Customer Service refers to Dis Walney as the creator of "Macho Mouse"
  • Commonly done in the manga of Kochikame even when it's only shown in one panel which are usually store chains or food products. Sometimes, actual real brand names are used, usually the expensive European cars.
    • Zig-Zagged in the anime: while a fair number of episodes use bland name products, one episode is centered over dolls and action figures, and Barbie and G.I. Joe are mentioned several times, absolutely no change done to the names.
  • Kodomo no Jikan has a bag of "Buffles" potato chips, complete with the original's slogan in modified form: "Buffles Have Ridges". Mimi can at one point be seen holding two cups of "Starbocks" coffee.
  • In Kurau Phantom Memory it's averted with Carrefour (in the year 2110!)
  • In Kyo Koi O Hajimemasu, Tsubaki can be seen sitting in front of "Bear Bucks Coffee" at the beginning of chapter 37.
  • In Ladies Versus Butlers! it's done hilariously for a military organization: during the school festival, the festivities are kicked off by an airshow featuring F/A-22s sporting a livery similar to that of the USAF Thunderbirds, along with the phrase "I AM CHICKEN" written on the fuselage and wings, plus the letters "CSAF" on the wings as well.
  • Laid-Back Camp:
    • Nadeshiko attempts to purchase Orio sandwich cookies in the fourth episode, with the Nabisco triangle visible on the packaging.
    • The Zebra supermarket that Rin and Nadeshiko visited in the sixth episode is based on the Selva Food Garden store in Minobu.
  • In Level E, Kyoko have a part-time job at Pizza Hot.
  • Love Live!! School Idol Project has the characters occasionally playing an arcade Rhythm Game called Dance Explosion, which is totally not Dance Dance Revolution.
  • Little House with an Orange Roof has a few examples. In chapter 2, Shoutaro's youngest son tries to watch "Momas the Tank Engine".
  • Lucky Star has "Rindows◊" (who knows, maybe it's an Engrish version of Lindows...)
    • Lucky Star also makes references to other anime and video games, even going so far as to bleep the titles out. The soundtrack is full of them as well (Mariya Might Watch Over Us, Bunguster...)
    • The cover of Volume 2 of Lucky Star has Kagami and Tsukasa eating "Poppy" (Pocky).
  • Lupin III: Dead or Alive gives Inspector Zenigata a portable television to play Lupin's video Calling Card, with the Bland Name of "Somy".
    • The Mystery of Mamo features a "Panasonick" radio playing Yuji Ohno's Love Theme that Jigen and Goemon are listening to.
  • In Mahou No Stage Fancy Lala, Miho Shinohara has a backpack made by "La", with a logo similar to "Fila". One episode also involves a makeup company called "Soseido", a reference to "Shiseido".
  • Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro had a 'Zeep' as well as 'Wacintosh'.
  • In Melody of Oblivion, Bocca buys Sayoko dinner at 'Starducks Coffee'.
  • Midori Days has Game Non Stop.
  • Minami-ke Okawari, has a later episode with Chiaki seen browsing "Nekoneko Douga" (Cat Video), which is a parody of the Japanese YouTube-esque site Nico Nico Douga (Smile Video).
    • Episode 10 of Okaeri prominently features Bringles in several shots, complete with an altered mascot.
  • Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou shows Yuzu using a search engine called "Gaagle" with almost the exact same logo and color scheme.
  • Mobile Suit Z Gundam has the fast-food restaurant Mc Daniel's seen in a single scene in the background.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has an episode which briefly features a circuit board labeled "Intel Outside". In a thermonuclear warhead. This was in the episode where Heero had to disarm a sabotaged missile silo (he does so by simply pulling a few wires).
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED CE.73: Stargazer, people are watching the news on ENN, an obvious take on CNN. Sven is also watching on a TV branded "MUSA", which stand for Sony's "WEGA".
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has JNN, also a take on CNN, which stand for "Japanese News Network".
  • Monster Rancher had a fictional counterpart of the original game (played on a logo-less PlayStation) which was produced by Mecto.
  • My Bride is a Mermaid. Episode 11 of the anime has Luna using "Ningyonet Explorer" (Ningyo means mermaid) to browse the web rather than Internet Explorer. In episode 15, Luna has a black "MERIKAN EXPRESS" credit card.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • As a child, Midoriya obsessively watched a "YoTube" video of All Might's debut as a hero, in which he saved over a hundred people from a bus crash.
    • When Gran Torino's microwave breaks, the replacement he orders arrives in a box from "omozan," rather than Amazon.
  • In Nabari no Ou Yukimi uses software like Odobe Photograph, Mouton AntiVirus 2015, Saikrosoft Sentence/EXL/Autolock/Postman, and Ninja Seiden (a pun on Ninja Gaiden).
  • In Nana to Kaoru Nana uses the "Moogle" search engine to do some independent research before Kaoru accepts her apology.
  • In The World of Narue, Kazuto's PC's OS is "Minboms '97".
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • There is "Yebichu" (Yebisu) beer, carried from the Oruchuban Ebichu manga; the Rebuild of Evangelion movie, however, did had the real Yebisu. There's also a "SECA" video game, odd considering Sega was in fact a major sponsor of the series.
    • The series also features a drinks machine offering "Asashi". This is a take-off of "Asahi" (and its logo), a Japanese beer popular worldwide.
  • DHL becomes DHU in Neon Genesis Evangelion and BHL in Battle Programmer Shirase.
  • New Game!:
    • Rin is seen with several empty cans of "Red Gull" at her desk. Aoba also spends some time reading an "Autodesk Saya" (Autodesk Maya) user guide for her first assignment.
    • Aoba's company's game, Fairies' Story 3, is being distributed on PZ3 consoles, and a game magazine shows a picture of an Animal Crossing-like game for the WillU.
  • The Mono eraser appears with the name "Nono" in Nichijou.
  • A "Nihon" camera appears in the first episode of Negima!? in place of the Nikon brand.
    • Makie enjoys a cold Mr. Paper in the White Wing OVA.
    • In the manga,characters could be found drinking coffee at "Starbooks".
      • As well as one character wearing a "Sax Pascals Anarchy" hat in chapter 27.
    • An aversion can be found in the manga here, as Vaio is a real computer, made by Sony. Although it looks like a netbook, rather than a full-size laptop as the Vaio line is (aside from the W series, released July 2009).
    • Nihon also supplies cameras for Azumanga Daioh, in the anime. There's also a Fuji-like sign (when Sakaki buys her Nihon camera), but no text is visible. In addition, the characters occasionally get food from Wg's.
    • Gin's camera in Rosario + Vampire is "Nokon" ("Nihon" in the manga).
    • in chapter 172, Chisame uses Mahoo?!
  • Noein has a "Yonkie" [Yorkie] bar.
  • Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu has "PDS", "Portable Dream Station" instead of Nintendo 3DS.
  • In chapter 17 and a volume 1 omake, Morei of Omujo! Omutsu Joshi is shown doing her online shopping on Amezon.
  • One Piece:
    • There is an in-universe version; Doko1 Panda, cheap knockoffs of the in-universe clothes brand Doskoi Panda.
    • There's a straight example with one character drinking "Jacky Daniels", though.
  • In Osomatsu-san, Todomatsu works for a Starbucks stand-in called "Sutabaa".
  • In Otogi Zoshi, Hikaru borrows a vespa-scooter-thing from "Pizza Hot".
  • Ouran High School Host Club does this often, with 'Mational' light bulbs (National), 'PineApple' computers, 'Hescafe' coffee, 'Oh!Laan! Auctions (a parody of Yahoo! Auctions), and 'Ukidoki Memorial' (Tokimeki Memorial).
  • An episode of Paranoia Agent features a crime manga serialized in Shonen Champ, or perhaps Shonen Chump.
  • Persona 4: The Animation features "Atzrbucks" in one episode.
  • Persona 5: The Day Breakers features a character drinking Corong beer.
  • Planetes has "Bepsi," and there's also a Coca-Cola analogue.
  • in Please Teacher!, "Pochy" takes the place of "Pocky". The sequel, Please Twins!, features a character who eats "Prech", a parody of "Pretz" and a cup of "Starjackass Coffee."
  • Popotan uses both "Mikon" and "Monica" cameras.
  • The Prince of Tennis had "Ponta" as a stand-in for Fanta.
    • Fila's distinctive "F" logo was altered into an "R" (for "Ryoma", as in Ryoma Echizen) in the anime.
  • In the second OVA episode of Pretty Sammy, "Standardsoft" and "Pineapple" were parodies of Microsoft and Apple, respectively. Similarly, Standardsoft's SynchroniCity OS spoofed Microsoft Windows, while Pineapple's Mach 8 OS is a spoof of the Apple Macintosh.
  • In Project A-ko, we briefly see a can of "Doctor Bepper."
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica has "Rocky" in place of "Pocky" . There's also a Dance Dance Revolution stand-in called "Dog Drug Reinforcement."
  • Ranma ½ has one episode with Genma using a "Seny Gandycam" to record Ranma and Akane's Almost Kiss. In another, Ranma and Akane buy burgers from what is clearly a Bland Name Product version of McDonald's... possibly the ancestor to "WcDonald's" in InuYasha.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena has a "Yamama" piano and "Sebastian Dior" luxury jewellery.
  • In the Japanese version of Rockman.EXE, Yaito's father is the president of Gabcom (ガブコン), a pun on Capcom (カプコン). Since Capcom made the Rockman.EXE series, this was probably meant to be a parody of the trope.
  • Rumic Theater episode 5 has a Dehny's restaurant.
  • In episode 7 of Sailor Moon Crystal, Ami checks up the info on Sailor V on the 'Finepad' tablet.
  • In the Saiyuki Reload -burial- OVA, Sanzo has 'Merlboro' cigarettes. They're always regular Marlboros in the manga.
  • Sakura Trick has Pokitz, which is something like Pocky or its sister product, Pretz.
  • Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has NtarBucks Coffee
    • Zan Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei Lampshades this in an episode of where a radio labeled "SONV" with an offhand comment "so Sony used to be Sonv, then?"
  • School-Live! has a lot of these in the manga. Gamer Chick Touko owns a "BSP", amongst other consoles ranging from a "Saga" Mega Drive to an (unnamed) Wii U. You can see games like "BallOut 3", "Mad Mix", and a game that is clearly Splatoon but has a name that begins with "P". Several manga such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica also have fake names.
  • Sekirei has Sony Vaio laptop spoofs.
    • Sekirei: Pure Engagement has a card game Naho instead of Uno.
  • In selector infected WIXOSS, we see Ruuko making a search using "Gargoyle" in episode 10 of the first season.
  • A Senran Kagura card shows Homura organizing an aisle of snack foods, including boxes of "Chocolate Stick" instead of Pocky.
  • Sgt. Frog has featured in its manga Mahoo! (instead of Yahoo!), Keuters (instead of Reuters), KerockTime (instead of QuickTime, probably because the software is from their homeworld) and Nendo CS (instead of Nintendo DS). The Kerons also use barely disguised Apple computers. There's also a minor character named Dasonu Maso (ダソヌマソ) whose name is deliberately similar to the katakana for Dance Man (ダンスマン), the stage name of the guy who composed the ending theme for the first season of the anime.
    • Mahou Sensei Negima! also uses Mahoo!, or rather Mahoo!?
    • Speaking of the Keroro anime, there were episodes that regularly mentioned "Monthly Shonen Alpha" (Monthly Shonen Acenote ), which is published by "Kanikawa Shoten" (Kadokawa Shoten, which publishes Shonen Ace).
  • Shakugan no Shana shows the protagonist entering a music and DVD store named HNV with an all but identical HMV sign overhead, in the first episode.
  • Shinryaku! Ika Musume. Episode 9 has the game SF4: Stockings Fighter IV with a logo in similar font and color to Street Fighter's.
    • An OVA has "Mintendo" games and consoles.
  • Shirokuma Cafe shows Polar Bear using "tulitter" to tweet something.
  • In Shokugeki no Soma, Soma uses some of these in his cooking, including "Asabi" beer and "Klaft" Parmesan cheese.
  • SHUFFLE! features a "Tochiba" microwave.
  • The Sky Crawlers features such products as Pops-Cola and Treasure soft drinks (with logos that resemble Coca-Cola and Pepsi, respectively), Green Label beer, and Leopard cars.
  • In Sky Girls, there are "Camon" cameras among other things. There's also a computer screen which has Mac toolbars and Windows folder designs. So it's "Maplesoft"?
  • Slam Dunk. The manga is filled with sports brand names everywhere, but the anime had to work around it, usually just not drawing the brand name. However, there is at least one instance in which a brand name was simply modified into "adadis" instead.
  • In Steins;Gate, the Spiritual Successor to Chaos;Head, MewTube and @channel return, in addition to the IBN computer brand and SERN. They also have Dk Pepper and Goodle.
  • Soul Eater gets bonus points for tying theirs in with their Theme Naming: "Deathbucks Coffee"
  • Star Driver has "Sougen-Dazs".
  • Sun-Ken Rock. A movie Ken watches at the theater was apparently produced by Boniversal Studios, who have the same logo as real-life Universal Studios.
  • Tamayura sports "Coco Cola", but then averts the trope with actual Rollei and Nikon cameras.
  • In Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge, Tanaka and Ohta stop by a manga shop that sells copies of Two Peak and Detective Coban.
  • Tenjho Tenge has some very Narmful cans of "Caca Cola."
  • in Toradora!, it's lampshaded when Ryuji wonders how a "Sudoh-bucks Coffee" has yet to be sued◊. Their logo is the Starbucks logo in disguise — fake mustache and all.◊ note 
  • Transformers: Super-God Masterforce features CNM News, Dunpop Cars, and Camon Cameras.
    • in Genshiken, Interestingly, all of the games the boys/girls play aren't product-changed, but the SYSTEM they play them on is. There's a wonderful image of a popular PS2 game sitting next to what is clearly a PS2 controller with the brand name "SANY" on it.
    • Not only that, they've got anime and manga that are very clearly famous series In Everything But Name. Series like Neko-Yasha and Astro Girl, Mode Riisu and Anman-Dama. Only Gundam makes it through unscathed, and even then, only in the manga.
    • There's also a "Starbooks Coffee".
    • There's also a "Kujifilm" camera, which doubles as a Shout-Out to the Spinoff Show Within a Show Kujibiki Unbalance.
    • And there was an "MG" model kit which turned out to be a Humongous Mecha, not a British sports car.
      • MG is an abbreviation of "Master Grade", the detail level of Gundam model kits by Bandai. There a three of them: High Grade, which are cheapest and simplest, Master Grade, which are much, much more complex, and Perfect Grade — the large-scale monstrosities costing hundreds of dollars, standing two feet tall, and taking months to build, paint, and pose.
    • The TV in the Genshiken room is a "Pehasohic" (Replace the h's with n's and it becomes obvious what they are getting at).
  • Trauma Ryoushi Kesshou. Haruto decides to have the study group play some video games during a break as a way to bond, so he pulls out his "Wry" console. (It's obviously the Wii, from the look of the console and controller and even from the font on the box.)
  • Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase has many, often containing cat-related puns, such as Nyapporo beer, Nyankus convenience store. Notable others include Kouhei's Ninolta camera, and Hazuki flying Riftnanza Airlines. Episode 20 of the anime ends on a picture with Hazuki holding a camera. Of course it's a "Neko".
  • In 20th Century Boys, it's Conspicuously absent with everything shown or named on this page, for instance, is real. (The extra level of real-world grounding makes it especially strange that nobody comments on the character names that are blatant shout outs to classic sci-fi manga.)
    • Although a "Suny" brand music player does appear at least once.
  • Subverted in Video Girl Ai, when Youta tries to take Ai to the movies but she doesn't want to. He eventually ends up going alone, and the film he sees is a spoof of Batman in which the titular character's bat motif refers to baseball bats rather than the animal. The subversion is in the fact that the name is written the exact same way as Batman's name is written in Japanese, making this also an Incredibly Lame Pun.
  • Wandering Son averts this and plays this straight at random. Sometimes you'll see actual brand names and at other times you'll see Bland Name Products. In the anime you can see "Starducks" at one point instead of "Starbucks," though in the manga they mention Starbucks by name.
  • Welcome to the N.H.K. also has "Mindows" OS, a "Pujitsu" computer and a "Lurex" (or something like that) wristwatch, "Warboro"-brand cigarettes, and probably other such brands.
    • Yeah, several beer brands, Starbucks, some MMORPG, and many, many other things get Bland Named.
  • Witch Hunter Robin also has Bepsi, as well as "Zony" and "Cock Cola".
  • In The World God Only Knows Keima plays all his myriad Dating Sims on a PFP. In one episode this is shown to stand for "Play Field Personal", which almost sounds like the name of a Shoddy Knockoff Product.
  • In xxxHOLiC they use GuGoot. (i.e., Google. This one's a bit further off the real name and some may be confused; the logo on the website is almost identical)
  • Yaiba's nemesis Takeshi has a wide-screen made by "Ony".
  • Everything in Yowamushi Pedal, from bikes to equipment and clothing.
  • Yawata has the traditional WcDonalds' in an early chapter, but around 70 chapters in, it has a "Mc Queen Hamburger," complete with a crown over the golden arches..
  • The boys in Yo-Kai Watch are big fans of the "Yolo Watch" series.
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh! manga has Sory and Panazonic, and the anime has "Lemon'' computers. It also briefly features Cora-Cola and Znickers bars.
    • Before its Defictionalization, the card game originally featured in one early chapternote  was originally called "Magic and Wizards" (or "M&W" for short) as a reference / homage to Magic: The Gathering.note 
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! featured quite a few of these in the early manga, including Capsule Monsters (Pokémon), Monster Fighter (Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots), Super Dancer (Dance Dance Revolution), Digital Pets (Tamagotchi) and both Monster World and Dragons, Dice, and Dungeons (Dungeons & Dragons).There were some differences, though, with the games usually being a fair bit more technologically sophisticated and having unfamiliar rules compared to their real-world counterparts.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has "Space Nook''.
  • Yuyushiki has a search engine called HooYa! (which incidentally does not seem to be associated with the United States Navy).
  • Yuri!!! on Ice's second episode has Victor using boxes from "CedEx".
  • Zetsuen no Tempest. When Mahiro mentions he's getting hungry, Yoshino hands him a "Znickers" bar.
  • Done in Shirobako for real-world animation companies, though it is not surprising, as the series itself is about the animation industry. There are so many, that it had to be placed in its own page.
  • Likewise, Magical Girl Ore does the same thing during episode 5. Referring to its producers, Pierrot Plus as "Hirrot+", and one of its episode subcontractors, drop as "drow".
  • The manhwa Zen Martial Arts Academy features "Taibucks Coffee." The name is close to "Starbucks Coffee," and it uses the exact same logo.
  • Silver Spoon features prominent use of the search engine "Geegle".
  • Re:CREATORS has an iPad-like tablet, that crashes with a BSOD containing a Mac OS kernel panic that identifies the kernel as "Lamarck" instead of "Darwin". Given the context, this also counts as a Genius Bonus, given that Lamarck inspired Darwin, and real iPads do run a derivative of the same OS and kernel and can◊ crash like that in rare circumstances.
    • The same episode featured in quick succession, Studio Creator (Paint Tool Sai), an oddly bland-named Google, Mauchly and Piclive (Pixiv).
    • Several other websites got this treatment in the fourth episode, including wrokedia.nt (wikipedia.org) and niwavideo.jpn (nicovideo.jp).
    • Meteora played a copy of Avalken of Reminisce which had "Games for Screen" (Games for Windows) and a Xero (Cero) rating on the cover.
  • Pokémon Sun & Moon has three recurring Team Skull Grunts named Tupp, Zipp, and Rapp. In the original Japanese version, their names are Tupper, Zip, and Wrap. note 
  • Dangan Ronpa 3:
    • In the first episode of Side:Despair, Nagito's luck gets him several cans of "Dr Hopper" and Chiaki plays Gala Omega on her Nantendo Game Girl Advance.
    • While Ryota is working on his anime in a new location in Side:Despair Episode 7, Junko gives him a mini-fridge filled with a Red Bull knockoff, replacing the bulls with bulldogs for its logo. She also references the real life product's Catch-Phrase.
    Junko: Have you got wings?
    • Monaka's room in Side:Future Episode 7 has a box with a "Darazon" logo, with a curved arrow under it similar to the Amazon logo.

    Comic Books 
  • Ultimate Marvel
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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".
  • 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".
  • 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 Frecklebitch 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.
  • Incandescence features "Happie Pigs" and "McRonald's" references in the first issue.
  • Empowered has lots of this: "YouToob", "Grant-a-Wish Foundation", you get the idea.
  • 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).
  • Sinister Dexter mentions My Face, among others. Also Basrtsucks Coffee, which could double up as an Unusual Euphemism.
  • A Horndog strip features a "Sharkie" marker.
  • In Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers' phone is made by a brand called Samsnug.
  • 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 The Multiversity, the stories of Earth-7 and Earth-8 are published in other universes by Major Comics.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.)
  • 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".
  • Robbie Reyes, Marvel's latest iteration of the Ghost Rider, is referenced in an in-universe newspaper article as driving a "Dotch Charter." [1]
  • Adventure Time: Ice King has a shop selling stereotyped punk fashion called "Lukewarm Subject", a parody of the real Hot Topic.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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!)
  • In X-Force vol. 1, there is the news channel SNN instead of CNN.

    Newspaper Comics 
  • A curious example from Baby Blues: Hammie has a G.I. Joe expy called Action Man. Action Man is the British name of GI Joe. Did the (American) writer know this and use it purposefully, or did he just make up Action Man as a generic toy name?
  • Bloom County had the Banana Jr. computer, an obvious parody of Apple computers. The computer even looked exactly like an Apple Macintosh (of the time), except for having stubby robot legs.
  • Dykes to Watch Out For does this constantly to parodic effect: "medusa.com," "Bounders Books & Muzak," "Bunns & Noodle," "Bed Bath & Bite Me," "Papaya Republic," "Panthouse," "Mothra Stewart" magazine, "Stairmistress," etc. The best was a publishing house, "Furrier Sprout & Genoux."
  • FoxTrot is chock full of this, mainly on the magazines or newspapers the characters are reading. Names such as Arper Shimage, Waxmell House and Gique are frequent. There's also "Iron Mysticus"note , "Doomathon", "Duke Quakem", ''World of Warquest", the iFruit, Bitty Babies, and the BackSync Boys.
  • In Get Fuzzy, the characters are often seen going to McDoody's to get a Howdy Meal. They also have a fish-and-chips chain called Cap'n Dawson's (both referencing "Captain D's", and allowing a Jaws reference by covering parts of the word "Dawson's" with the edge of the frame).
  • Zits has "FourBucks Coffee."
  • In Luann brother Brad worked at "Weenie World", which uses a "W" logo shaped like inverted arches.note 
  • La Cucaracha features a combination coffee shop-and-check-cashing-store called "Barriobucks".
  • Cul de Sac features a giant discount store with greeters called "Val-U-Less", and a bric-a-brac-filled family restaurant called "P.J. Piehole's".
  • Candorville has brands like Concast Cable (not Comcast) and Feudalbanc Massacard (not MasterCard). The strip for November 3, 2013, used a sports team called the Candorville Rednecks to reference the Washington Redskins name controversy without using the real team's brand.
  • The Drabble strip for January 24th 2014. Ralph went into a fast food place called Down-N-Out Burgers. Even though he didn't say anything, the counterman said "Coming right up!". Ralph says "You've heard of the secret menu? I just ordered off the super secret menu!". The Real Life hamburger chain In-N-Out actually has a "secret menu" of items and specialties that aren't on the regular displayed menu.
  • Crankshaft.
    • The title character had a collection of old Bean's End mail order catalogs, until he sold them off. Beans's End is a combination of the Real Life L.L. Bean and Land's End catalogs.
    • The title character regularly meets his friends at Dale Evans Restaurant, based on the Roy Rogers chain.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Foodfight!: Originally written with the premise of showcasing brand-name items, the film became an infamous Development Hell in which the majority of license owners refused to let their product names or mascots be used, effectively robbing the film of the majority of its cast. To work around the problem, the producers created dozens of stand-in Bland Name Product mascots—many of which were so ugly and unappealing that critics speculated they were intended as a Take That! to the original license holders.
  • Considering that Shrek takes place in an Anachronistic Fairy-Tale satire world, a good amount of its background humor comes from Far Far Away's Medieval counterparts of contemporary products. Attentive Viewers will notice stores such as Farbucks, Tower of London Records, Old Knavery, Burger Prince, Baskin Robbinhood (with the "31" as "XXXI"), Banana Kingdom, Friar's Fat Boy, Abercrombie & Witch, among others..
  • In Over the Hedge, the three porcupine kids manage to steer a van using skills learned by playing "Auto Homicide 3". Also, given the premise, there are also loads of other fictional brands for the junk food the gang steals (including the very prominent 'Spuddies', which was originally going to actually be Pringles but the studio couldn't get the proper rights).
  • Hoodwinked!: in her "The Real G" montage, there's a shot of Granny Puckett skydiving while drinking a can of "Forest Dew" Soda which plays along with the Mountain/Forest setting of the movie).
  • The tires that Lightning McQueen wears in Cars are branded Lightyear Buzzard tires, which doubles as a reference to the Goodyear Eagle tire brand as well as to Pixar's own Buzz Lightyear.
  • Speaking of Toy Story, the yellow Pizza Planet Truck has on its tailgate the barely readable brand which sure looks a lot like Toyota. The driver seems to have scratched out parts of the logo though, leaving behind only the letters "Y" and "O." Apparently it's made by 'Gyoza' (which is Japanese for "dumpling"). The films also manage to quite notably avert this trope with the extensive amount of real world manufacturers and toys brands they managed to coheres into getting, such as Hasbro, Playschool, and Mattel, not to mention the many characters based on established brands like Mr. Potato Head, Barbie and others.
  • Shark Tale has "Coral Cola", Newsreef (Newsweek), Kelpy Kreme Donuts (Krispy Kreme), and "Gup" (Gap).
  • Zootopia has plenty: Preyda, Lululemmings, Bearberry, just to name barely any. The animators seem to be competing with how many real-life brands they can get past using animal puns, and the wiki lists at least 75 directly based on other brands (and those are just the ones people spotted).

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Coming to America lampshades it, as the owner of the fast-food restaurant McDowell's gripes about McDonald's trying to sue him over (what he feels are) trivial similarities.
    Cleo McDowell: Look... me and the McDonalds people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds.
    • Ironically the movie was shot in a converted Wendy's. Later, it is shown that Cleo has a McDonalds operations manual in his possession, which he quickly puts away.
  • In Idiocracy, Brawndo is largely a stand-in for Gatorade. The main character, who's from the present day, even mentions that it "tastes just like Gatorade". In a bizarre twist, Brawndo became a drink in Real Life — and is a citrus-flavored energy drink, like Monster and Amp, rather than a sports drink like Gatorade. Legend has it they wanted to use Gatorade, but Gatorade refused. Several other real companies agreed to allow their names to be used, even though they were used in a disrespectful way (Fuddruckers, Costco, Starbucks, Carl's Jr.).
  • In Steps Trodden Black, Alex buys energy drinks which are named Hurricane Handjob and Cocaine Tears.
  • In the Evil Dead films, Ash works at the local S-Mart, an obvious stand-in for K-Mart. The store's snappy catchphrase "Shop Smart! Shop S-Mart!" kind of makes you wonder why no real-life retailers ever thought to use the name for themselves.
  • The energy drink "Minotaur" in Role Models is clearly intended as a stand-in for Red Bull.
  • In the Wayne's World films, ubiquitous Canadian restaurant Tim Horton's Donuts becomes the film's fictional Stan Mikita's Donuts. Horton and Mikita are both Hockey Hall-of-famers. Actor-writer Mike Myers grew up in Scarborough ("Scarberia"), a suburb of Toronto, where Horton played; character Wayne Campbell lived in Aurora, outside Chicago, where Mikita played his entire NHL career.
  • Disaster Movie shows screenshots of sites named "FaceNook" and "uPay". Which are then promptly referred to in dialogue as Facebook and eBay. Apparently the owners of those sites didn't give Seltzer and Friedberg as much money as Apple did.
  • Tapeheads has RVTV (Rock Video TV), a thinly-veiled stand-in for MTV, who wouldn't let the filmmakers use their name.
  • The Left Behind film series has Buck Williams working for Global News Network (GNN).
  • Undercover Brother.
    • When General Boutwell sets up a chain of fried chicken restaurants, he calls it GFC, General's Fried Chicken (AKA KFC/Kentucky Fried Chicken).
    • Penelope Snow and Antoine Jackson go shopping at Khaki Republic, which was based on Banana Republic.
  • Airplane! does this with a flashback involving Supperware, an ersatz of Tupperware. Also the name of the airline, Trans America Airlines, is a stand-in for Trans World Airlines.
  • On Babel 13 in Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, there are advertising posters for "Baaburger" (Hesburger, featured itself at the beginning of Pirk's flashback) and "Baabsolut Vodka" (Absolut Vodka). Justified by Babel 13 being located in a parallel universe.
  • Most appearances of the UNIX operating system in movies from The '80s and The '90s, like The Net. It will usually appear as UN*X when mentioned. This is at least partly Truth in Television. Companies that developed proprietary versions used names like Ultrix (Digital), IRIX (Silicon Graphics), AIX (IBM), etc. (partly because UNIX is a registered trademark and partly for branding reasons) and the standard convention when one wanted to refer to things-similar-to-but-not-exactly UNIX was to represent it as "Un*x".
  • In many movies, Time magazine has appeared as "Tempo" (e.g., Death Wish).
  • Fireproof has a Honeycomb cereal box altered to read "Coney-Bomb."
  • Liberal Arts does this in the Twilight books. Although it wasn't mentioned by name, the "vampire book" that sparks an argument between the two main characters is based on the book series' second installment and is titled "Lunar Moon" (based on Twilight's New Moon). This is likely done to avoid a Celebrity Paradox with cast member Elizabeth Reaser, who also plays Esme Cullen in the Twilight movies.
  • Most of the video games shown or mentioned in Angry Video Game Nerd The Movie are bland-name products of real games. This includes E.T., a major focal point of the story, which is now spelled "Eee Tee". The movie also features "YouPooed" as a stand-in for YouTube. However, Rolling Rock, the Nerd's signature beer brand, is surprisingly unchanged.
  • The Made-for-TV Movie Without Warning (1994) consists of a Phony Newscast on an unnamed network with a logo that vaguely resembles the CBS "eye". Notable in that this was not done to avoid trademark infringement—the movie appeared on CBS, which would naturally have the rights to its own logo—but to provide a subtle hint to the audience that what they were watching was fictional.
  • The Kentucky Fried Movie had many examples, including Willer (Miller) Beer, Barker (Parker) Brothers, "Feel-a-Round" (Sensurround), Nytex P.M. (Nyquil P.M.) and Nesson Oil (Wesson Oil).
  • In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Valentine's glasses have an extra plastic piece above his right eye. Although no attention is drawn to it, it strongly resembles a Google Glass.
  • In Home Alone, the McCallisters have pizza delivered from "Little Nero's" instead of Little Caesar's. This actually had a brief Red Stapler moment when, on November 6, 2015, UberEATS ran a promotion allowing fans to order pizza from local restaurants but delivered them in Little Nero's boxes by drivers wearing Little Nero's hats.
  • In Ex Machina, Blue Book is pretty much Google in all but name. It even sounds like "Google" when they say it quickly.
  • In The Pact, Google is replaced by Global, complete with the now-outdated serif-font logo.
  • In Buffalo '66, the many items of memorabilia shown relating to the Queen City's NFL team use the word "Buffalo" where you would expect to see the Bills' logo.
  • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice: Bob and Carol visit a hippy-dippy New Age therapy retreat that is obviously supposed to be the Esalen Institute. But the producers apparently didn't want to pay the folks at Esalen, so it's only called "the Institute".

    Literature 
  • In About the B'nai Bagels, protagonist Mark keeps a copy of Playboy-like magazine under his mattress called Playgirl. Another boy's mother actually gets him a subscription. Later editions changed it to Playboy. (The book and Playgirl magazine were first published the same year, 1973; E.L. Konigsberg had no way of knowing that a real magazine of that name would exist.)
    • Pre-1973, "Playgirl" is an obvious veiled reference to a well-known girlie magazine and hiding one under your bed says something about you. Post-1973, "Playgirl" is an obvious reference to the actual magazine of that name, and hiding one under your bed says something considerably different about you. (For those who somehow managed not to know: Playgirl features naked men, as opposed to Playboy's naked women.)
  • Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon features the heroes using a UNIX-like operating system developed in Finland, called... "Finux". Supposedly, this is because Neal knew a lot about the inner workings of Linux, but wanted to have a little bit more freedom on what was possible. This book also features the Electric Till Company (ETC) instead of NCR (National Cash Register).
  • One of Harry Turtledove's Alternate History series has the most popular soft drink in the Confederate States of America being "Doctor Hopper". Also the popular Confederate comic book "Hyperman." In both cases, characters occasionally think about the "Damnyankee drink/hero with a similar name."
  • Lampshaded to an extent in 2001: A Space Odyssey and its many sequels. HAL's designer patently denies any relation between the computer and IBM - whose initials are all one letter after H-A-L.
    • Word of God states that had he realized the connection, he would have changed HAL's name, as IBM helped them make the film.
    • Whereas other product placement is depicted quite normally, although many of the then-contemporary companies had ceased to exist by 2001. There still isn't a "BBC 13", though.
  • Good Omens gave us the "Burger Lord" chain. Elvis works at one.
  • Scott Westerfeld's novel So Yesterday not only censors out brandnames with asterisks but, as the entire plot deals with consumer culture, lampshades it by having characters refer to a certain brand as "the client" and the narrator explaining exactly why.
  • The Dilbert Principle tells advertisers to take advantage of their customers' stupidity to confuse competitors' products with their own "eerily similar but much worse" products. The suggested product names include "Honduh Accord," "Porch 911," and "Popsi Cola."
  • Zombies For Zombies has dozens, such as PutriSystem.
  • The Daily Prophet of Harry Potter is totally not the Daily Mail. Totally not.
  • Christopher Brookmyre's Intrepid Reporter Jack Parlabane works for the Scottish broadsheet The Saltire, and its sister paper Saltire on Sunday, which are clearly The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday.
  • Dracula has the Dailygraph newspaper (Daily Telegraph) and Kingstead Cemetary (Highgate Cemetary, near Hampstead).
  • Isabel Allende's City of the Beasts and The Kingdom of the Golden Dragon center around trips a teenage boy takes with his aunt, an intrepid correspondent for the noted magazine... International Geographic.
  • The Ultra Violets is full of these, such as Smashface, the premiere social networking site, Furi, Cheri's helpful voiced assistant, built into her phone, and Iris's tablet, the iCan.
  • In the graphic novel of The Red Pyramid, Khufu eats "HappyOs," which was probably done because they actually show the box, whereas the original book merely mentions "Cheerios." The box, though, looks almost exactly like a regular box of Cheerios, right down to the stylized "G" that is the General Mills logo.
  • In the Shadow Ops book Fortress Frontier, the search engine/free email site Yippee.com is used as a contact point for some of the protagonists.
  • In the novel The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard, there's a brief scene where Caitlin's boyfriend Josh invites her out for a bite at "Dirk's", a local burger joint. Given that the story is set in Seattle, this is likely Writing Around Trademarks to Dick's Drive-In. This is particularly jarring, as other local Seattle businesses get mentioned (including Caffe Vita, a brewery).
  • Don't be surprised if you start seeing shoddy ripoff of every popular brand ever known while visiting the neurologically parallel universe of MARZENA. A parallel universe where Picosoft and Axar merged to form Spartan Soft, and where Gogool is actually spelled correctly.
  • In The Berenstain Bears, a popular handheld video game device among cubs is the Game Bear.
  • In Void Moon, Cassie Black robs a room at an Egyptian-themed Las Vegas casino called the Cleopatra. It's an obvious stand-in for the Real Life Luxor.
  • In The Balanced Sword, one character has a "LumiTainment Portable" gaming device, with a game called "Chrono Victory".
  • One of the images from Spectral Shadows features Vicki Anderson drinking a soft drink described as "Cozi Cola." In addition, there's the main Operating System in Serial 11, "Doors", and the virtual reality game "Another Life".
  • In the Tommy and Tuppence collection Partners at Crime, the couple sometimes have dinner at the Blitz Hotel, standing in for the Ritz.
  • The comic strip depicting the "snake in the fur coat" UL in The Big Book of Urban Legends takes place at J-Mart.
  • In "The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Robert A. Heinlein, the title character at one point takes advantage of a rivalry between soft drink manufacturers "Moka-Coka" and "6+".
  • Paul Quarrington's novel Whale Music has an unusual example involving a real brand name but a fake product; main character Desmond Howl owns a powerful synthesizer/sequencer called the Yamaha 666 that stands in for the Fairlight or the Synclavier; in real life, the Yamaha 666 was a model of French horn.
  • Horrorstor is based around ghosts in a Bland-Name Product version of IKEA. IKEA actually also exists in the book, and it's commented on that even they think the rip-off is awful.

    Live-Action Television 
  • In Jessie, the characters get stuck in a giant tea cup bilboard for Tipton Tea, an obvious expy of Lipton Tea. Also a Shout-Out to The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
  • In Hannah Montana, there's Standford University with an added D. May possibly be in a different location then Stanford given how Miley is able to drive back and forth a few times from Malibu in about a day when it usually would take between 6-7 hours one way. This could just be a case of Artistic License. It wouldn't be the first time.
  • Blood Over Water has the villains work for Sleet Mountain. While there is a real Sleet Mountain Service Center in Newfoundland, the one in the story is a blatant stand-in for Ice Mountain. Even in the novelization, it's located "somewhere near Big Rapids." The nearby town of Stanwood hosts a real-life Ice Mountain bottling plant. In the original cut, it was Ice Mountain. Led to a lot of Clumsy Copyright Censorship later on.
  • In Korean Series:
  • The cereal-loving Jerry Seinfeld had "Double Crunch" cereal in his cupboard before Product Placement deals landed real-life cereals in his apartment.
  • "Morley", a fictional cigarette brand based on Marlboro cigarettes ("Marleys" - the box design didn't exactly hide it, either), was the brand of choice for The Cigarette Smoking Man (of The X-Files) and Spike (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Packs of Morleys have also turned up in Malcolm in the Middle, Burn Notice, The Outer Limits (1995), and the movies Spy Game, Prozac Nation, and thirteen, as well as elsewhere. The X-Files episode Brand X lampshades this fairly heavily.
  • Friends:
    • A number of episodes feature "Love That Crunch" cereal, which is otherwise completely the same as "Cap'n Crunch", including the character on the front.
    • Another episode had "Finger Lickin' Chicken," which was clearly Kentucky Fried Chicken under a different name... right down to The Colonel himself being on the bucket.
    • Other episodes have had, for example, "Sprito" replace "Sprite."
  • The Latest Buzz featured GleeTube in place of YouTube.
  • Legends of Tomorrow, while the Legends were disbanded, Sara took up a job working at "Sink Shower & Stuff", a parody of "Bed Bath & Beyond".
  • An episode of Too Close for Comfort has Cartoonist Henry Rush in Hollywood to turn his comic strip character Cosmic Cow into a Network Cartoon Show. The pitch meeting takes place in a room with a giant window that shows a panoramic view of the city, including a billboard for 'J&C' Scotch Whiskey.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch turned this into an art form:
    • Witches trying to magically create brand goods automatically create a Bland Name Product equivalent with an obviously similar name. According to Hilda, this is the result of the Witches' Council's intervention after the market was flooded by magically created Gucci knockoffs. They can't even conjure Rollerblade inline skates; instead, they get "Rollerblahs".
    • Other products that appeared in the episode were "N&N's" instead of M&M's; "Butterthumb" instead of Butterfinger; "Schmickers" in place of Snickers; "Popsi" instead of Pepsi; and in place of a Yoo-hoo, Sabrina manages to conjure a "Hey, Over Here".
    • The spin-off novels take this idea and run with it. Any fast food Sabrina conjures up automatically comes from a restaurant called "Burger Queen."
    • In a Season 6 episode the product keeps the name but the concept is different. Sabrina goes to the Other Realm version of Hootersnote  and discovers that it features dancers in owl costumes.
    Sabrina: "Hooters is a lot different back home..."
  • An episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show has Mary buy a "Fast Wheels" car racing set for neighbor Bess (Hot Wheels).
  • An episode of Homicide: Life on the Street has a character drinking "Bedwiser".
  • In Law & Order, Searchling is a search engine with a Google-style logo. Another search engine called Yah has also featured.
    • One episode featured an obvious rip-off of the Smoking Gun website called UpTheButt, lampshaded when Branch comments it's a terrible name.
  • Skist, the soft drink of choice on Veronica Mars, is a shortening of Sunkist.
  • In the Hobgoblins episode of MST3k, an educational short Crow has made is shown on a "Stony" TV.
  • In Beetleborgs, a bottle of "Fountain Don't" is used to trick one of the main characters to drink a mutation potion.
  • Used to an extreme in every single Nickelodeon show produced by Schneider's Bakery Productions. This includes All That and The Amanda Show (mostly lampshaded) as well as Drake & Josh and Zoey 101. Extremely narmful in iCarly, where their webshow is called "iCarly" but they still listen to "pearpods," talk on their "pearphones," lug around oversized "pearpads," and all the computers have a pear logo on them. It's the same with sister show Victorious. Drake and Josh has a Game Sphere (parody of Nintendo's Gamecube) and Megan has a Pintendo GS(a parody of the Nintendo DS)..
    • The i in iCarly stands for Internet, not as a reference to the Apple products. Though, Dan Schneider himself has a liking on Apple computers, thus he parodies it in the form of the Pear products in the show.
    • iCarly also features that orange rag they sell on TV at 2 in the morning, the "Sham-Pow."
    • Both Drake & Josh and iCarly have featured the Chinese restaurant chain "B.F. Wangs" instead of P.F. Chang's.
    • In the Amanda Bynes sitcom What I Like About You (another Schneider show), Holly buys an "I-Bop" and downloads hundreds of songs onto it.
    • Interestingly, in later episodes of iCarly and Victorious, the Pear Phones and Pear Pads themselves were shaped like pears, and not like the usual rectangles.
    • Sam & Cat went so far as to lampshade it. "You see, they can't use real Pear products on the show, so they replace them with Bananas."
  • Zoey 101 seemed to favor putting a school emblem over the manufacturer's logo (as was also done on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide).
  • Even Big Time Rush does this, e.g., "Cosmopilan", a bland-name version of Cosmopolitan
  • The fictional girlie magazine Playpen which made its first recorded appearance in an episode of The '60s Sitcom That Girl and is still going strong. Spot it in Married... with Children, Malcolm in the Middle, Family Guy, That '70s Show, Kyle XY, The X-Files, Millennium, Friends, Lost, NCIS, Rules of Engagement...
  • You Can't Do That on Television
    • One sketch features a kid's mom finding his stash of "Playtoy" magazines.
    • The series also skewered the "Pepsi Challenge" commercials on various occasions - in one episode Alasdair takes the "Pep Pop Challenge," and in a cut scene from the pilot episode of Canada-only spinoff Whatever Turns You On, Ruth Buzzi participates in the "Peski Challenge" (electrocuted by Dungeon Master Nasti when she gives the incorrect answer as to which soft drink she prefers).
    • The show could and did get away with not using Bland Name Products when it was a local-only show in Ottawa, Ontario. For example, the local version of the Peski Challenge sketch (featuring a local child actress instead of Ruth Buzzi) refers to Pepsi by name, and a mother (played by the same child actress) "gives" her children McCain's Deep and Delicious Pies (in the face), replaced on Whatever Turns You On by Ruth Buzzi and the fictional "McSplat's Deep and Delectable Pies."
  • An episode of The Bill featured the police looking for clues on the young female kidnap victim's "FaceSpace" page.
  • The 'Friendface' episode of Brit Com The IT Crowd features, as well as the eponymous social networking site, soft drink "Cuke", resplendent in exactly the same packaging as Coca-Cola.
    • In a later episode: "This man has no online presence. He's not on Friendface, he's not on Jitter."
  • Harry Hill's TV Burp had a skit featuring the shopping channel OVC, instead of QVC.
  • Coronation Street characters buy their food at "Freshco" rather than Tesco. There's also the search engine "Voggle" (instead of Google) and a social media website called Face-Scene with green graphics - despite other characters also referencing Facebook.
    • Later lampshaded by Harry Hill's TV Burp with a skit about them going to "Frainsbury's" (Sainsbury's) as well.
  • Murphy Brown has a box of Dunkin' Donuts in almost every episode... except the familiar logo has been changed so that it reads "Donuts Donuts".
  • Frasier: The brothers go to buy a new recliner for Martin and the salesman recommends a "La-Z-Guy" chair.
    Frasier: "La-Z-Guy." I wonder what they call the deluxe model? The "Hopeless Slack-Ass?"
  • The Middleman created "Your Face in a Tube", simultaneously making us think of MySpace, Facebook, AND YouTube in one awesome website name.
  • The JAG and NCIS team, regularly view reports from the ZNN news channel.
    • NCIS does this with several different brands. GSM for FHM, Cybervid for Erbdiyr/ YouYube and Pagebook for Myspace/Facebook, depending on what the plot demands. Possibly the strangest example is the 'Bearey Smiles' talking teddy bear ment to be a stand-in for the Tickle Me Elmo craze of the nineties. It's... underwhelming.
      • Beary Smiles is a third-rate Teddy Ruxpin.
      • DC Blend as a stand-in for Starbucks is probably the most noticeable because the cups are on almost every episode.
  • Averted when it's their own network being shown. 24 will show Fox News, Law & Order will show NBC, and so forth.
    • Makes perfect sense.
    • In ER, news programs were from the Chicago NBC affiliate, using actual 10 PM anchors (generally Warner Saunders).
    • Cue Spooks, a BBC show, courting some controversy when SkyNews popped up in an episode.
  • The Big Bang Theory
    • In the university canteen, soft drinks such as Dr. Pepper and Diet Cola are sold in cans identical to the real-life brands. Sheldon's non-existent cousin (who was made up to fool Penny) had apparently escaped rehab and was staying at a Motel 8.
    • After being disappointed by the taste of orange juice and amount of crispiness of a toasted English muffin, Sheldon addresses a tub of margarine.
    I have no trouble believing you're not butter.
  • The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica has a Spaceline called Pan Galactic which uses an identical symbol to Pan Am, examples of which can be seen here◊ and here.◊
    • This was apparently a Shout-Out to 2001: A Space Odyssey (which featured Pan Am commercial space shuttles from the Earth to orbit and the Moon) rather than a get around for copyright, which makes slightly more sense In-Universe since the series is set over 150,000 years prior to Pan Am ever existing.
    • It kind of also sounds like a Shout-Out to Hitchhiker's Guide's Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
  • Chuck features a smoothie place called "Orange Orange". Their logo is written in a font identical to that of Orange Julius's logo. They also have Buy More, a poorly-disguised version of Best Buy. Instead of a Geek Squad, they have a Nerd Herd. There's also Large Mart, presumably a knock-off of Wal-Mart.
  • Everybody Hates Chris
    • In the "Everybody Hates Halloween" episode, Julius buys Gravy Ways (Milky Ways), M&N's (M&M's), and Butterthumbs (Butterfingers) as a way of saving money on Halloween candy.
    • The family also uses Tussin (Robitussin cough syrup) as a cure-all for every type of ailment.
      Tonya: Mom! Chris got hit by a bus!
      [Rochelle is seen grabbing her purse and an economy-size bottle of Tussin as she runs out the door.]
    • Tussin is actually an "off brand" name. Cheaper version of the Brand name but perhaps not quite as effective. Sold in Walmart stores, for example.
    • Chris at one point mentions that their family would buy boxes of "Cookie" from the store. Not "Cookies", just "Cookie", as in one giant cookie in a box that they would have to cut up and share.
  • Castle
    • In one episode the title character's mother is making a "MyFace" account.
    Castle: MyFace? Don't you mean—
    Alexis: Don't bother, I've been trying to correct her all day.
    • In another episode, the team is tracking a money order from a bank called "Machovia."
    • "YouWillViewIt.com" is a video website.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Web of Fear" prominently features a bar of Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate, with packaging resembling the 1960s Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate design. Doubles as a fun little injoke as Douglas Camfield was the director of the serial.
    • The new series occasionally features the Alphabet News Network "AMNN," most often during News Monopoly scenes.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • "Tito's" brand potato chips show up on numerous occasions. The bag looks very similar to a Frito-Lay Ruffles bag.
    • Happy Cat in Season 8, obviously intended to be Hello Kitty.
  • Degrassi tends to come up with Bland Name Products for anything media-related, and avert it otherwise unless something is an independent small business in-universe. They seem to use a lot of Canada-only brands so the aversions aren't immediately apparent to viewers in the US and elsewhere.
    • They also use fictionalized names for Canadian universities but real names of U.S. ones.
  • Season 7 of 24 involved a chemical weapons threat perpetrated by none other than "Starkwood," the U.S.-based private army— security contracting firm.
  • Leverage had an interesting twist to this in season 1: Instead of having fake products, they would have real products, but would never show their names or labels. For example, Hardison is clearly seen drinking orange Jones soda, but the front of the label was always against his palm or otherwise turned away from the camera.
  • On the US/Canadian version of Queer as Folk, Michael worked at the "Big Q", a thinly disguised Kmart.
  • In Little Britain, Judy and Maggie belong to the fictional "Women's Association" instead of the Women's Institute. In the initial broadcast of their sketches, they were from the Women's Institute, but it was hastily changed when the real organisation did not want to be associated with such vulgar characters.
  • Notably averted with Warehouse 13 in the episode "Love Sick." TigerDirect features prominently in the plot, as the Villain of the Week was employed here.
  • In an early episode of Sliders the gang visited an alternate world where computers ran on the "Doors" operating system.
  • Community
    • One episode has Annie eating a bag of "Let's" potato chips, obviously in the style of Lay's potato chips. The Tag in the final episode of Season 3, "Introduction To Finality," has Leonard doing a YouTube review of Let's chips.
    • If anyone is drinking a can of beer it will be "Olde British 800", looking very much like the "Olde English 800" malt liquor.
    • The search engine being used is "Searchsies.com".
  • CSI has a few examples of renamed Playboy-type magazines.
  • The CBC High School Sitcom Mr. D is an interesting case; the school's name (Xavier Academy) and uniforms suggest it's a Catholic school, but that's never stated outright and there are no priests or nuns in sight.
  • In Hidarime Tantei EYE, characters can be seen using a search engine called "Bogel"
  • In Supernatural, the search engine used is "Search the Web". "BFFLink.net" is a social networking site. In the episode "In My Time of Dying," Sam uses a "Mystical Talking Board" to communicate with Dean during his out-of-body experience.
  • In the Unforgettable episode "The Man in the Woods", the main characters visit a diner whose beer list includes Spam Adams and Limstel.
  • Averted and lampshaded at once in the Season 4 NCIS episode "Witch Hunt," in which a teenage witness reports the car used in a hit and run is a Kuruma. Gibbs takes it as misdirection since it's the Japanese word for "car", but McGee points out it's the stand-in name for a Chrysler Sebring in Grand Theft Auto III.
  • Lampshaded and played with in the later seasons of ‘Til Death. Joey attempts to prove that everyone's living in a TV show and points to the numerous fake brands and trademark dodges as examples. Earlier, Eddie and Joy are shown replacing boxes of actual brand-name product with Bland Name Products because cash is tight and they can't afford actual brands anymore.
  • Scrubs has Coffeebucks.
  • In the TV mini-series for Stephen King's The Stand, the beer two of Flagg's guards are drinking is labeled "Beer," although the cans are colored and the font used is a very near match to Coors.
  • On Bones, Hodgins and Zack once tested whether zooplankton could survive feeding on toxic human flesh using a chunk of poisoned meat in a tank with "Sea Chimps" (= "Sea Monkeys"). Averted with the meat, which was openly stated to be Spam.
  • Sesame Street does this, since it's on PBS and Sesame Workshop wants to avoid Product Placement. Some of the product labels include drawings of Muppet characters.
    • The games in the background of the Sesame Street Community Centre include Dos (for Uno), Tricycle playing cards (for Bicycle), and a very Sesame Street take on a Parental Bonus with Cards Supporting Humanity (a party game for wonderful people).
  • It's easy to miss, but in Spaced places like the JobCentre aren't given their real-life branding. The real-life JobCentre decided (perhaps a touch humourlessly) that they didn't want to give the impression that any of their staff would give preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of how they felt about The Phantom Menace.
  • Sherlock has "MePhone" as a stand in for "iPhone."
  • A Saturday Night Live sketch parodied a series of Taster's Choice instant coffee ads with an ad for "Tayster's Choice" spermicidal jelly.
  • Elementary
    • A publication printed on pink paper called the "Investor's Post" in season 1, an apparent stand-in for the real life Financial Times.
    • There is an online community called "Everyone" which works somewhat similar hacks as Anonymous. And "Jamaica Quay" for Pirate Bay.
    • In one episode, one of the suspects was involved in smuggling Barnen Delight, an Italian chocolate egg with a toy inside that is illegal in the US because the toys are considered choking hazards, exactly like the real-world Kinder Surprise. ("Barnen" is Swedish for children, "Kinder" is German.)
  • The standard Disney Channel equivalent of the Apple iPhone seems to be the "zPhone", and it factors in episodes of many episodes of Disney Channel series such Hannah Montana, Shake It Up!, and A.N.T. Farm.
  • An episode of Come Fly With Me has Taaj (one of the airport staff) driving around a buggy belonging to an organisation called the UKAA (UK Aviation Authority), a play on real life organisation "the British Aviation Authority". The buggy features a red version of the BAA logo, whereas in reality it is green.
  • In one episode of You're the Worst, Jimmy receives a "Manchester FC" football jersey from his father.
    • Several characters make references to the Red Napkin meal prep delivery service, a clear parallel to Blue Apron.
  • On Silicon Valley, which is largely about the start-up culture in Silicon Valley, the production team said one of the hardest parts of character design was the company names. Nearly everything they came up with was taken. Although other companies are sometimes mentioned by name, the main character Richard works for Hooli, a thinly-veiled parody of Google.
  • On Now and Again, trucks with the logo "Toys B' Fun" were often seen.
  • Open Heart has "pinblr", which seems to be a bland variation of both Pinterest and Tumblr.
  • A Different World, which takes place at a historically black college, features fake historically black sororities and fraternities, although extras are seen in the background wearing real sorority/fraternity paraphernalia. Dwayne and Ron attempt to join "Kappa Lambda Nu" and Whitley is a member of "Alpha Delta Rho", which combines the names of some of the more well known black sororities (Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, and Sigma Gamma Rho).
  • The Scream: The TV Series has Cliplicious and Chirpster as its bland-name versions of YouTube and Twitter respectively.
  • Comic Relief 1989 featured a parody of the hugely popular Nescafe adverts (the ones with Tony Head and Sharon Maughn).
    "Nafcafe Gold Bland. If you like it that much, get your own bloody jar!"
  • On 3rd Rock from the Sun Dick calls his Mr. Potato Head "Mister Potato Man."
  • In Riverdale, Hermione Lodge teases her husband, having noticed a "Spiffany's" bag, about whether it contains a "Glamergé" egg; Veronica borrows her mother's "American Excess" credit card.
  • Legends of Tomorrow:
    • During the team's 10-Minute Retirement in "Aruba-Con", Sara is working for a version of Bed, Bath & Beyond called Sinks, Showers & Stuff.
    • "Beebo, God of War" opens at a Toys Are We. The eponymous Hug-Me Beebo (the must-have toy of Christmas 1992) is a sort of cross between a Tickle-Me Elmo and a Furby.
  • The Carol Burnett Show
    • One sketch parodies commercials where a character is approached by a stranger asking them to try a new product. Carol plays a housewife who has multiple people enter her kitchen and ask to to try items like Leg & Hammer (Arm & Hammer) baking soda and Borito (Purina) Dog Chow.
    • In a sketch with several dolls, one is named Barbrie (Barbie) and one is named G.I. Jack (G.I. Joe).
  • An episode of For The People sees "Yowler" used as a substitute for Tumblr.

    Magazines 
  • "Dean the Barbarian and the Bus Station of Doom" (1)◊, (2)◊, an RPG parody in Sinclair User, has a hamburger restaurant by the name of MacDonagall's, and a soft drink called Burpsi-Cola.

    Music Videos 
  • Owl City's "Fireflies" video features a Type & Speak (not Speak & Spell) toy.
  • Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop" video takes place in a "Burger K" clone.
  • Foo Fighters' video for "Big Me" is a parody of Mentos commercials, replacing the product in question with Footos.
  • Not originally a video, but Ray Davies of the Kinks had to fly back from New York to re-record a single line of "Lola", changing "Coca-Cola" to "cherry cola" because the BBC wouldn't play the song with a commercial product name in it.
  • The video for the Gorillaz song "19-2000" has the band riding around in a "Geep".
  • The video for “Celebrity Status” by Marianas Trench has one of the TV channels showing a Gapp commercial.

    Pinball 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • AAA wasn't on board with then Mega Champion Jeff Jarrett taking the Championship Belt to a TNA TV taping and Jarrett complied to their wishes, instead creating a belt that looked suspiciously similar to it called the Mexican Heavyweight Title or, alternatively, the AAA World Heavyweight title.

    Radio 
  • In Cabin Pressure, the airline that Douglas used to work for is called Air England rather than British Airways. Similarly, GERTI The Alleged Aeroplane is a Lockheed McDonnell 312, rather than a Lockheed Martin or a McDonnell Douglas plane.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Shadowrun
    • McHugh's (AKA McDonald's) is where shadowrunners go for a cheap, fast burger between runs (and to meet Mr. Johnson), according to The Neo-Anarchists' Guide to Real Life.
    • The Seattle Sourcebook had Gold Lion Inns, from the Real Life Red Lion Hotels chain.
    • The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America.
      • The Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex had a department store chain called Theimann-Markles (Niemann Marcus).
      • One of the bus lines servicing Quebec City is Whippet Bus Company (AKA Greyhound Lines).
    • New Seattle. Seattle has the following stores: Lordstrungs (Nordstrom), Lacys (Macy's), Wordsworth (Woolworth), Lears (Sears) and Quickway (Safeway). It also has the company Microdeck (Microsoft).
  • Mayfair Games' Underground supplement Streets Tell Stories had Tres Equis (Dos Equis) beer, USA Alive (USA Today) newspaper and the Roebock Athletic Shoe Corporation (Reebok).
  • SLA Industries. On Mort you can buy a Klippo lighter (Zippo lighters) and go to Dunkem Donuts (Dunkin Donuts).
  • Paranoia XP supplement The Underplex. Clones could buy Lee-V-EYE's Sort-A-Blue PseuDenim Leisure pants, a reference to Levi's (Levi Strauss & Co.'s) jeans.
  • Toon supplement Tooniversal Tour Guide
    • "CarToon Wars" setting. The Twisted Ridge Mall had stores such as B. Dulltoon Books (B. Dalton Books), Spacy's Department Store (Macy's), Frederick's of Hollyweird (Frederick's of Hollywood), Z-Mart (K-Mart) and Toonited Artists (United Artists).
    • "Dungeons And Toons" setting. Toonquest (RuneQuest), Tunnels and Moles (Tunnels & Trolls), Dragonpants Saga (Dragonlance Saga), Forgotten Helms (Forgotten Realms)
  • Classic Traveller, Paranoia Press supplement Merchants and Merchandise Merchandise section.
    • The Canolta XA-1 camera was made by the camera company Canolta Photographics (the Japanese camera company Minolta c.f. "Only from the mind of Minolta").
    • The LHeP9(Or) Series 12/136 computer system entry said that the manufacturer Delta Research sold programs for it through a subsidiary, Interworld Business Machines (AKA IBM, International Business Machines).
  • Encounter Critical supplement Asteroid 1618. One of the restaurants in the Domed City is Rigellian Fried Poultroid (AKA Kentucky Fried Chicken, known as KFC nowadays).
  • Chaosium's Stormbringer supplement Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion. One of the businesses in the Velvet Circle is Froderik's Millinery, which sells "stunning garments of silk and cotton" that are "unsuitable for treks through the wilderness, but handy for an eveningÂ’s pleasure." (Frederick's of Hollywood, which sells sexy lingerie for women).
  • Cyberpunk
    • The game has, among others, Merrill, Asukaga, & Finch (Merrill Lynch), and SegAtari (a portmanteau of Sega and Atari). Averted with companies such as Barrett and Colt, named after and with the same business as their Real Life counterparts.
    • The game's main source of para-medics is Trauma Team. Their main competitor is REO Meatwagon.
  • West End Game's Ghostbusters RPG. The Ghost Toasties adventure has a number of mascot characters from various cereals: Zap, Crinkle, and Bop (Snap, Crackle and Pop, Rice Krispies), the Quix Rabbit (the Trix Rabbit, Trix cereal), CapÂ’n Crackle (Cap'n Crunch cereal), the Cocoa Quips Koala (the Sugar Bear from Post Super Sugar Crisp), Toucan Jack (Toucan Sam, Froot Loops) and the Lucky Chomps Leprechaun (Lucky Charms leprechaun),

    Theatre 
  • Finian's Rainbow has the catalogue of Shears and Robust. Mr. Shears and Mr. Robust themselves make an appearance.
  • The Sera Myu has Banzai as a sponsor for show they're performing in one of the musicals (specifically Eien Desestu's revised version) Bandai was a Sponser for the Sera Myu. In a bit of a subversion, they don't replace Bandai and are said to make Omochi (Rice Cakes) instead of Omocha (Toys)

    Toys 
  • The Transformers franchise has had to deal with some of this over the years. The original toyline featured some vehicle modes that strongly resembled real life models. When they do an anniversary toyline with an updated version, they sometimes just cannot take what the car was originally because of licensing problems. For example: Bumblebee was a VW beetle and Jazz was a Porsche. Both companies did not want to be associated with a violent kids' show. So instead Hasbro would create a car design that was far enough removed from the name brand but close enough that there is no problem recognizing the character. The 2007 movie did not have that luxury, and just changed the alternate modes. The Alternators and Binaltech lines were unique for having absolutely everything be a licensed toy, though it was mostly Ford, Chevy and Dodge.
    • The original Mirage and Wheeljack toys play with this trope. Takara originally had licenses from car manufacturers for their Diaclone line, which were imported unchanged by Hasbro. As racing cars, Mirage and Wheeljack's vehicle forms were licensed from Ligier and Lancia, respectively, though their primary sponsors (Gitanes and Alitalia, respectively), not so much. The toys were rebranded "Citanes" and "Alitalla". A Diaclone-exclusive Stratos in Marlboro livery was similarly changed by Takara, resulting in a toy fans refer to as "Marlboor" Wheeljack. "Marlboor" made a cameo in an issue of The War Within (though without the sponsor names, of course, since this was set millions of years ago on Cybertron).
    • "Morphobots" were bootlegs of the Transformers Cybertron Legends (mostly beasts) toys sold in dollar stores.
  • KenSingTon, makers of the "Vii", a knockoff of the Wii. The Vii got the nickname "Chintendo Vii" after widespread exposure on the Internet.
  • Not sure where this was seen, but in one British supermarket you could purchase a "circular plastic flying disc" (known as a "Frisbee" to everyone else).
  • NECA toys released a set of toys based on the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that included a box of "Tile Game Pizza."

    Video Games 
  • The freeware game 1bitHeart has "BitPhone" for "iPhone" and "Mutter" for "Twitter" (though "tweets" are still the term used for sending messages).
  • In ARMA II - Operation Arrowhead, the BAF's standard offroad vehicle (simply called offroad in-game) is the Hand Over Offender. Totally not a Land Rover Defender, even though they are identical.
  • Black Mesa has "Fony" instead of "Sony", "Swanson" instead of "Samsung", "Tittles" instead of "Skittles", "Coca-Bola" instead of "Coca-Cola", "Del Phoney" instead of "Del Monte", etc. On the more creative end, they have "Ramblers" instead of "Lays", and "Alpine Hue" instead of "Mountain Dew".
  • Escape From Tarkov has plenty, thanks to heaps of barter items and electronics you would have to collect in your entire PMC career.
    • Suspiciously similar-sounding brands like, 'Zibbo' (Zippo) lighters, 'Paid' (Raid) pesticide, 'GPhones', 'Roler' (Rolex) gold watches, and even cigarette brands like 'Malboro' (Marlboro), 'Wilston' (Winston), 'Strike' (Lucky Strike) and 'Apollon Soyuz' (Apollo Soyuz). The Graphics Card is also modelled after an ASUS GeForce GTX 750 Ti.
    • The Interchange map also features a familiar blue-and-yellow-themed furniture megastore named 'IDEA' (IKEA).
    • Averted for certain items like Ibuprofen painkillers, Grizzly First Aid Kit and the Powerbank, which is clearly modelled after a Xiaomi Mi 10400mah Power Bank with the Xiaomi logo visibly unaltered.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 had "McBurger Kong" restaurants. It featured a giant gorilla statue on the roof, which would get a team-colored headband when garrisoned, and would change into a cowering pose if the building was damaged to unusability. The expansion also adds McRoo Burger for a level set in Australia, and Massivesoft.
  • Disgaea 3 had Mao playing an unnamed but strangely familiar RPG on his Slaystation Portable.
  • An item from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is called Penters Natural. (Werther's Original)
  • Euro Truck Simulator has AI traffic cars that look exactly like IRL cars except for the brand emblem. German police cars, for example, look most very definitely like a 2012 Volkswagen Passat... but their logo is two V's in a circle.
  • Fallout has Nuka-Cola! Two hundred years after a nuclear war they're still good! They also come in Nuka-Cola Quantum, which is enhanced with a mild radioactive strontium isotope, which gives it a kick and a pleasing blue glow.
    • Red Racer (Radio Flyer) tricycles.
    • Chryslus (after Chrysler) Corvega (portmanteau of Corvair and Vega, two of Chevrolet's worst cars).
    • Adams Air Force Base in Broken Steel is based on Joint Base Andrews (formerly Andrews Air Force Base).
    • Cram is obviously a parody of Spam, right down to the packaging.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud is forced to hijack a motorcycle in order to escape from Shinra HQ. It's a Hardy Daytona (Harley Davidson).
    • During Zack and Cloud's escape from Nibelheim, the truck tires read 'Goodstone' (Goodyear + Bridgestone).
    • "Wall Market" is supposed to be a play on "Wal-Mart".
  • Just about every car model in the Grand Theft Auto series is a Bland Name Product version of an existing car. Examples include the Mundano (Ford Mondeo), Counthash (Lamborghini Countach in GTA 1), Beast/Banshee (Dodge Viper) (the Banshee is a Corvette in Vice City), Impaler (Chevrolet Impala), Bug (VW Beetle), GTA V's BF Injection (VW Baja Bug), Penetrator (Jensen-Healey Interceptor), Benson (Mercedes-Benz 300 SL), Aniston BD4(Aston Martin DB4), Phoenix (Pontiac Firebird), Fortune (1990s Ford Thunderbird), Cheetah (Ferrari Testarossa in III and later), Infernus (Lamborghini Diablo in GTA III, Honda NSX in San Andreas, Pagani Zonda in GTA V), Coil Voltic (Tesla Roadster), Buffalo (80's Camaro in San Andreas, Dodge Charger 2012 in GTA V), and U-Jerk truck.
    • GTA V added car manufacturers that are basically an IRL manufacturer by another name. "Bravado", for example, is the in-game equivalent of Dodge: they make the Gauntlet (2008 Challenger), the Buffalo (2006 Charger), the Banshee (2013 Viper), the Bison (2013 Dodge Ram), and the Gresley (2013 Durango).
    • It's also important to point out that very few vehicles (at least in the later 3D sequels) are actually exact replications of the car. Although you can usually tell what it's supposed to be mimicking (especially iconic vehicles), it will never be completely accurate (not including the new name).
    • Grand Theft Auto IV also uses "Panoramic" instead of "Panasonic".
    • San Andreas and IV also have Sprunk soda, an obvious reference to Sprite.
    • Grand Theft Auto London 1969: Fat = Fiat, Squealey = Austin Healey, James Bomb = Aston Martin DB 5, Crapi = Ford Capri, Myni = Mini Cooper, Locust = Lotus, Reno = Renault, Harold = Triumph Herald, Raver = Rover, Jug Swinger = Austin Powers Jaguar E-Type, MC Hamper = MG Midget, S-Cart = Ford Escort.
    • Everything in the GTA 'verse is this. Perhaps most clever is "Eris" shoes for "Nike" in San Andreas, both being Greek goddesses.
    • "Cluckin' Bell", a pastiche of Taco Bell and KFC.
    • Tarbrush Coffee, parody of Starbucks.
    • Geta Life, eCola, Burger Shot, Well Stacked Pizza...
    • One of the most hilarious in IV is Krapea, a brand of Swedish pre-assembled furniture... Much like IKEA.
  • Headhunter sports several boxes bearing the amusing logo "Nosy," done in Sony's font.
  • In the much-loved 'A New Life' stage of Hitman: Blood Money, one of the best ways to get started is to slip a pair of drugged donuts to some FBI agents, so you can steal their uniforms. The fauxnuts are, of course, from 'Delicious Donuts', using the characteristic color scheme and font of Dunkin' Donuts.
  • Kingdom of Loathing has more of these than you can poke a stick at, although it's more because the dev team love puns than for legal reasons. Cloaca Cola and Dyspepsi Cola, Tom's of the Spanish Main toothpaste, Hatorade sports drink, Red Minotaur energy drink, Domesticated Turkey bourbon, Eye-Pod mp3 players, Elmley sunglasses... the list of crimes against the English language is almost endless.
  • The Japanese version of Mario Kart 64 features sponsors such as Marioro (cleverest use of a cigarette brand ever), Luigip (after Italian motor oil company Agip - the logo is Luigi's nose-and-'stache instead of the six-legged lion) and Yoshi 1 (after German motor oil Mobil 1). The only one that carried over to the American version was Koopa Air (while the name does not denounce any brand, its boards had the same color scheme as those of Goodyear tires in the Japanese version, unlike the American version). Luigi Raceway also has a "64 ball", a reference to the Union 76note  ball.
  • In Mega Man 3, there is IBN computer equipment.
  • Metal Gear
    • In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Snake's favourite brand of cigarettes is Lucky Strikers, in a white box with a red spot.
    • In the Japanese version of Metal Gear Solid, Snake mentions that his favorite brand is now "Moslems". This brand actually appeared before in Policenauts, where they were sold packaged in a Marlboro-style red box.
    • Most of the guns in the recent games are real, save the obvious fantasy weapons, but in the original Metal Gear, Snake's submachine gun was a Mac II Ingram. Squint at it. Yes. Not a Mac 11 Ingram, that would be a real gun.
  • In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, in Spider-Man's first conversation with Hank Pym, he mentions having had lunch at "Taco Hut".
  • Mushroom Men runneth over with various, amusingly-labeled products. If it exists in the game, chances are good it either has a humorous made-up name (like matchbooks from "Ned's Banjos & Feline Taxidermy") or a Bland Name. Some of them are quite subtle, too—very few people outside of artists would recognize what "Prissy Color" pencils are related to (Prismacolor art products, for the curious), for example.
  • The vending machines in Persona 3 all have Captain Ersatz brands of beverages, such as Cielo Mist, SoBay, Mad Bull, Dr. Salt, One-Up, and Fountain Dew.
    • Lampshaded or at least poked fun at by the punny item descriptions. SoBay, for example, is described as a drink that has uncanny popularity in Internet auctions. The BauerBar is said to have enough energy packed to "keep you going for 24 hours straight".
    • There's also Cylon Tea, which comes in twelve flavors.
    • Also extends to some other items; one of Elizabeth/Theodore's requests requires you to ask for Junpei's COMP-Station Portable, and its description states that there's a disc for Odin Cube inside of it.
    • The spinoff game Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth mentions both Mad Bull and Dr. Salt again, with the former even getting its own tagline ("Mad Bull gives you wins!"), and when you encounter a fake wedding photo in the second labyrinth (based on Group Date Cafes and wedding imagery), several characters will comment that the picture looks "Photochopped."
  • This trope goes all the way back to GameTek's MS-DOS and Commodore 64 adaptations of The Price Is Right, released in 1990. The prices roughly correspond to their real-world counterparts.
  • Resident Evil
    • Resident Evil 2 had plenty of these, such as a fast food wrapper from "Burger Kong," a "Taxago" gas station, and vending machines selling "Cho Cho Cola" in a red can, and "Cool Soda" in a blue can with a white recurved stripe; because the stripe is also a trademark of Coca-Cola, the former was replaced in later releases by a plain black can, the latter by a coffee machine. And there's a cigarette billboard that resembles the Marlboro brand, only green (looks like Capcom didn't know Marlboro sells a menthol...).
    • Exevia batteries, parody of Exide.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis had a DeLorean replica (sans emblems) at the Stagla gas station. And ads for "Safsprin", "Aquacure", and "Adravil".
    • All of the games use real-life weapon models for the guns, but only in the first game do they actually go by their brand names (Beretta, Remington shotgun, the Colt Python magnum, and a MAC-10 automatic gun in the PC version). Later games either address guns with a generic title ("handgun", "magnum") or give them a different name altogether (In the R Emake, for example, the Colt Python became the Silver Serpent). Resident Evil 6 has a mixture of both (a 909 and the "Wing Shooter", for one)
  • San Francisco Rush series: Most of the cars are knockoffs of real ones, although a few are completely made up. Compact=Acura Integra R, Muscle Car=Corvette Sting Ray, Bruiser=Plymouth Hemi Cuda, Exotic & Super GT=Vector M12, Mobster=Chevy Fleetline, Sportster=Dodge Viper (RT-10 roof, but with GTS competition stripes), 4x4=Ford Explorer, Protoype=Ford GT90 concept car, Euro LX=BMW Z9, Venom=Lamborghini Diablo, Concept=BMW Nazca C2?, Panther=McLaren F1. The gas stations are also generic imitations of Shell, with the word "Fuel" and a smiley face in place of the shell logo.
  • Silent Hill is loaded with these all over the titular town, including a Queen Burger (later Happy Burger) restaurant (complete with the "bun halves" framing the logo), Vestal Gigastore (Virgin Megastore), cardboard boxes stamped with "Fedy-X," and an out-of-place bag of jellybeans bearing a logo almost identical to Jelly Belly's. Then there's Poston Market, Texxon gas, the (S)Hell station with the nautilus shell, the Circle 8 convenience store with the logo that looks a suspicious lot like that of 7-Eleven, and the AEC restaurant with the A&W motif.
    • Oh, and buried somewhere in there is a legitimate Jack Daniels logo painted on a cargo door.
  • Super Hang On featured real-world brand names on billboards in the game in its original arcade iteration. However, when released on the Sega Genesis, the names were changed. "Bridgestone" became "Dridalstone", "Marlboro" became "Morobare", and "NGK Spark Plugs" became "NOK Spark Plugs", to name a few.
  • Super James Pond (also known as [Super] James Pond II) has "Bony" stereo systems.
  • Postal 2 features a game called SymHomeless, and lampshaded by a local newspaper telling that "lawsuit narrowly averted by changing i to y".
  • Pro Evolution Soccer: although its early instalments were praised for superior gameplay over its competitors, the series has been notorious for its lack of licenses, resulting in fake player and team names. They run the gamut from Bilingual Bonus (Bayern Munich in PES 4 was called "Rekordmeister", i.e. "record champion" - which they are in the Bundesliga) to As Long as It Sounds Foreign (as was the case between the 2012 and 2015 editions, except for English teams which are always indicated by their region, such as "Merseyside Red" for Liverpool).
  • Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero lacks licensed cars, instead using replicas of them, each named "TYPE-_____." If you get up close to a car and look at its emblem, you'll notice that it looks almost like a real brand name, but altered slightly; for example, Isuzu-like trucks have the emblem spelling out "USUZU."
  • The remake of the first Trauma Center has Pochy. No points for getting the reference right.
  • A Vampyre Story has an energy drink called "Scarlet Bovine". This is a double bland-name, referring both to Red Bull energy drink and Crimson Cow, the game's publisher.
  • Nintendo 64 racing game World Driver Championship had, among others: Ellipse Stallion=Ford Mustang Cobra R, Rage 512 EVO=Porsche 911 GT 1 EVO, Reeds R12 Manta=Chevy Corvette C5R, Elan Swift TT=Lotus Esprit GT1, Ram Venom GTR = Dodge Viper GTSR, EXR Mystic=TVR Speed 12.
  • Even some of the old Sega console games have these. "Marobare" (Marlboro) and "Bridalstone" (Bridgestone) ads have appeared on the roadside which looks like the real thing if you are not paying close attention.
  • The Adventures of Willy Beamish. The Beamishes own a high-end television made by — according to the narrator — Fony. Then, there are Willy's game systems of choice: his Nintari home console and portable Game Buddy.
  • Maria collects My Precious Pony dolls in the Backyard Sports games.
  • Ridge Racer series: Devil = Lamborghini Diablo, Age Erisso = Fiat 500, Age Abeille = Renault 5 Turbo, Age Pegase = Lotus 7, Lizard Bayonet = Corvette, Assoluto Istante = Vector W8, Assoluto Gephardo = Porsche 952 LM, etc. The cars in R4 and later were mostly completely made up, although some had bits and pieces from real cars. The car on ther RR7 cover resembles a Saleen S7.
    • The Gamespot reviewer for Ridge Racer 6 once confused the "Klonoa" signs found in the game with the real-life "Nokia."
  • The arcade version of Ninja Gaiden has signs for "Caca" Cola and "Fefs"(Pepsi), and "Esso Gus" barrels.
  • Several instances are shown in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Most notable are "The Foxy Theatre", "69 Gas", and "Kuchi", a clever take on the Gucci clothing brand.
  • A rather badly-done example in the Robot Wars game Arenas of Destruction (no, not that Robot Wars). In the Robot Builder, some of the motors and batteries you can equip your machine with include "Dosch" and "Yuarta"...except in the preview images for these items, the names and logos of the real-world companies (Bosch and Yuasa) are shown on them instead. Oops.
  • In Modern Warfare 2 one of the levels takes place in and around Burger Town joint based on Burger King. There's also a Taco To go with a logo rather similar to Taco Bell.
    • The first level of Modern Warfare 3 involves taking out a radio jammer on top of the "Manhattan Stock Exchange". The final level, similarly, involves invading the "Oasis Hotel" in an attempt to finally kill the Big Bad.
    • Call of Duty: Black Ops II averts this with the EOTech Sight; earlier games used sights from the same company under the generic "Holographic Sight" label. At the same time, though, the HAMR scope returning from Modern Warfare 3 is now simply the "Hybrid Optic".
  • Sam & Max Hit the Road features the roadside convenience store chain Snuckey's, based on the real world Stuckey's chain (oddly enough, Steve Purcell got away with a reference to the real-world Stuckey's in Sam and Max: On the Road).
  • The 11th Hour has a "Victim" mouse trap in the laboratory.
  • In FAMOUS brings us Cafe Con Quistador, whose signs bear an amazing resemblance to Starbucks', only in blue, not green.
  • The Exidy arcade game Star Fire is obviously a pastiche of Star Wars. It came out a couple years before the official Star Wars arcade game.
  • The Test Drive reboot has a Safeway lookalike store (Fastlane? Fastway?) in San Francisco, in the same location as the Safeway featured in Bullitt.
  • The City of Heroes MMORPG has ads for an energy drink called Red Beast.
  • Space Quest has Monolith Burger, with a giant "M" logo.
    • In Space Quest IV, stores include Sacks, WallMart, and Radio Shock. The software store has games titled "Boom", "Sim Sim", "It Came For Dessert", etc.
  • Peter MacDonald in Metal Wolf Chaos ("Because, yes! The pen is still mightier than the sword!") is a reporter for the "DNN" news channel.
  • RE: Alistair has its MMORPG "Rivenwell Online". Stores in the mall include "Boundary's Books", "The Divide", and "Gamego". Boundary's sells a book called "Planetost" (the others are generic, like notebooks and encyclopedias), and Gamego sells "Movie Maniac", "Diamond Moon: Final Phase", "Other Saga", "Monochrome Diet", "Demon of Edo", "Walk This Way", and "Rock Festival".
  • Nanashi no Game's plot centers around a dual-screened handheld game system called the TS.
  • In the Gran Turismo series, due to lack of an FIA license, the Monaco GP course is renamed Cote d'Azur, and the F1 cars are generic replicas.
    • Subverted in Gran Turismo 5, which has two actual licensed Ferrari F1 cars in it (the F2007 which also appeared in GT5: Prologue, and the F2010). Also notable is the use of a number of RUF-branded cars in GT5 as stand-ins for Porsches (which Sony does not have a license for) although since RUF builds their actual cars on top of unmarked Porsche bodies this doesn't necessarily apply. Instead, the cars are described as being based on "vehicles from a German automaker."
  • Shift 2: Unleashed also runs into a licensing problem with Monaco. Because Codemasters (Formula 1 2010) holds the F1 license and all the related tracks, Slightly Mad Studios was forced to call the track "Riviera". They even tell players to guess which circuit the track is based off of on the website.
  • Some tracks in Forza Motorsport behave this way, too. For example, Sunset Peninsula Raceway is a venue on the Florida coastline that includes a tri-oval approximately 2.5 miles in length and infield road course, similar to Daytona International Speedway. (Forza is not immune, as several older NASCAR video games also lacked Daytona due to licensing issues.) The series finally got the official Daytona track in the sixth game, along with a licensed NASCAR expansion pack that includes Homestead Miami Speedway, whose infield course is even more similar to Sunset's.
  • Game Dev Story (and many of Kairosoft's simulation games, in fact) contain too many Bland Name Products to count.
  • In the Call-Back scene from Telltale's Back to the Future, the label on the mall is JPPinney.
  • Some of the civilians in [PROTOTYPE] wear New York Bets sportswear. At least one player for the Bets appears to be #5 Trillo.
  • Season of the Sakura: The Yamagami Electronics Shop has Sany and Shapr TV sets, and the video game consoles Neo Ger CD, Sage Seturn, Playson, and an obscured PC-FX.
  • Sword of the Stars has, among others, Kaprica and Heegaraa.
  • The original Transport Tycoon used real names for trains/trucks/planes. In Transport Tycoon Deluxe, however, they changed these names to something that sounds similar (for example, "EuroStar -> AsiaStar).
  • Averted with Duke Nukem. Soon after the launch of the first game, the name was changed to "Duke Nukum" because of the character Duke Nukem from Captain Planet; however, since the name was not trademarked, they switched back to "Duke Nukem".
  • Solatorobo has "Stardogs Coffee" shops.
  • Beam NG.drive is built around crashing incredibly familiar-looking vehicles with minor design differences from their real counterparts. As an example, the German brand "ETK" produces cars with a very distinctive grill.
  • Ace Combat Joint Assault at one point has "BNN".
  • The car manufacturers in Split Second are pastiches of real companies. Ryback cars look like modern versions of classic American muscle cars such as the Camaro, Mustang, and Dodge Challenger. Cobretti look like Italian speedsters and the name sounds like Ferrari or Lamborghini. Hanzo has cars that resemble the Impreza and Lancer, and the name sounds like Mazda or Honda.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend has Calorie M**te and Keymania IIDX.
  • The girls of Neptunia do their shopping on Amazoo.nep, and Compa mentions that she found the location of the tutorial dungeon through DungleMaps. The reboot, mk2, gives us the Chirper social networking site.
  • Poke646: The vending machines of the titular company are full of different sodas. Would you drink a bottle of Poke?
  • Like the GTA example above, Scarface: The World Is Yours does this with its cars.
  • The import/export warehouse level in Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield has boxes labeled "Panafonic".
  • Subverted in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Palutena starts talking about "Super Bash Sisters", only to be corrected by Pit that it's actually Super Smash Bros..
    • Played straight with "Divinipedia".
  • One of the restaurants where you can buy food in the Saints Row series is Freckle Bitch's, an obvious parody of Wendy's.
  • In Little Busters!, Kud's grandpa sends things to her with 'Fodex.'
  • The PC game Inspector Gadget: Global Terror had a tofu restaurant called O'Ronald's (read: McDonald's) as a major plot point.
  • The Super Mario Bros. clone The Great Giana Sisters was named as such in order to avoid copyright suits from Nintendo. The tactic didn't work, as the game was much too similar to Mario, with entire levels copied over. The courts ordered The Great Giana Sisters off the shelves. Later, the game achieved cult status, with two sequels: The Great Giana Sisters DS was released on the Nintendo DS, and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, made by the developers of the original Giana Sisters, was released for PC and consoles, including, ironically, Nintendo's Wii U.
  • Another Bland Name Product clone of Mario is Secret Maryo Chronicles, an open-source Mario clone/game engine starring a childlike chibi instead of a portly plumber. Originally, the game was a straight Super Mario World clone, with sprites directly ripped from the original game. To avoid legal troubles, the developers later switched to a unique graphics style and a completely different protagonist. However, much of the Mario influence remains in Maryo down to the enemies, items, and even the music (which is entirely made up of fan remixes of Mario themes). Unlike The Great Giana Sisters, Secret Maryo Chronicles has received no acknowledgement from Nintendo, meaning that this game is, for now, safe from legal troubles.
  • Mass Effect refers a few times to an in-universe MMORPG called Galaxy of Fantasy, in which, according to the dossier the Shadow Broker has on them, Legion apparently have a level 612 Ardat-Yakshi necromancer. They also have the maximum possible score in N7 Code of Honor: Medal of Duty.
  • All over the place in First Encounter Assault Recon, if you bother looking - up to and including Cheezee Pooz, a parody of the already bland-name Cheesy Poofs from South Park. Parodied with some vending machines in the second game for a drink called "Professor Doctor", calling it "the original" and asking that you "don't settle for imitators".
  • Ninth Rock has both MASA and Spacebook.
  • Gitaroo Man shows a "Burger Queen" restaurant in the background of the second level.
  • 10 Days with My Devil has "Prata" shoes, "Horshey's" chocolate, and "Crackle Jacks." Amusingly, in the prologue sequence Prada is mentioned by name - Haruhito claims to own the company - but it's referred to as "Prata" in all subsequent dialogue.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV lets you loot the ruins of several familiarly named stores, such as Shanel, Luis Witon, or the laptop-focused Appolo store.
  • Citizens of Earth has Moonbucks Coffee and FedUPs postal service.
  • Time and Eternity gives us Rad Bowl Energy Drinks.
  • Mother 2, the Japanese version of EarthBound, had red "Come" trucks with a familiar-looking swirl logo. During localization, these became running stick figure logos.
  • In New York City Bus Simulator, the streets are filled with these (as well as, inexplicably, what appears to be Engrish). Chevy becomes Cheyyv, Cold Stone becomes Old Son, Burger King becomes King King... witness it here.
  • Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artifact has transport company "Eurochunnel" and a newspaper called "UK Today".
  • Several of the Papa Louie time management games use Creameo bits as a dessert topping, whereas in real life Oreo bits are a popular dessert topping.
  • Dyscourse. A bunker at an abandoned military base contains an uneaten can of SLAM.
  • Cities: Skylines
    • The game features the infamous "Chirper", an in-game social network that residents use to voice compliments or complaints about how the player is running the city. The Chirper logo is a blue bird.
    • The game's fandom has widely adopted the term "Cims" to describe the game's inhabitants, obviously echoing the "Sims" in The Sims. It also connects to the Cities: Skylines developers' previous game, Cities In Motion.
  • Kerbal Space Program features the rocket engine manufacturer "Kerbodyne". The real company was Rocketdyne, designer of numerous engines including the F-1 and J-2 that powered the Apollo missions.
  • Yo-Kai Watch features the mogmog Burgers restaurant in the video games and anime. While it looks just like a McDonald's (in fact, several Japanese McDonald's restaurants were temporarily re-designed as mogmog Burgers to promote the anime movie), its name comes from Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger.
  • Shenmue has "Bellwood's Cola", which has a graphical design very close to Coca-Cola.note 
  • ThrashRally, a top-down Neo Geo rally racing game, had -among others- Toyot GT-Four/Land Crusher (Toyota Celica GT-Four), Parsche 911/OD 6000X (Porsche 911), or Mitsuboshi/Thunderjet (Mitsubishi Pajero).
  • In the Sega Saturn game Bug! Too (sequel to Bug), whenever Bug loses a life, a shoe crushes him. The shoe was apparently made by "Bug Crusha", with a logo that parodies the (long since defunct) shoe company British Knights.
  • The Pokémon series generally avoids using this trope, with most named in-universe products being wholly original. However, in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, a brand of dolls named "Hi Skitty" is brought up a few times.
  • American Truck Simulator. While Kenworth and Peterbilt are real, the rest of the companies in the game are this. You will encounter Chemron (Chevron) gas stations, UDS (UPS) trucks, and CarZone (AutoZone) billboards. Also, some jobs consist of transporting cars to or from Voltison dealerships, whose logo, color scheme, and vehicles look strikingly similar to Tesla's.
  • Euro Truck Simulator had, amongst real life Volvo and Renault trucks, the Majestic truck company, along with its sole truck model, the Across. A few patches later, it was changed to the actual Mercedes-Benz Actros.
  • Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest has Oda Nobunaga constantly ordering supplies from Amasson, though in that universe it's based in South America and not the USA.
  • ATOM GRRRL!! has mentions of "MickDee's", "Wanda's" and "Subwich".
  • The Arcade Game Drift Out minced the names of its car models: Masda Familio (Mazda Familia), Lancha Deleta (Lancia Delta), Toyata Celca (Toyota Celica), Fard Siara (Ford Sierra), Mitsuboshi Galent (Mitsubishi Galant), BWM AW3 (BMW AWD) and Subaro Legagy (Subaru Legacy). These and other ill-disguised brand names such as Michlin (Michelin) and Shall (Shell) can also be glimpsed on in-game billboards. The sequels avert this.
  • Caligula has "Gossiper", a social network that is very clearly supposed to be Twitter.
  • D.Va's "Game On" emote in Overwatch is directly inspired by the Mountain Dew and Doritos obsessed "Gremlin D.Va" that the fandom created. She munches from a bag of "D.Vatos" while playing her game.
  • Tattletail has the eponymous Talking Tattletail doll, an extra-creepy version of the infamous Furby dolls.
  • Undertale has "Mew Mew Kissy Cutie", Alphys's favorite anime, and its disappointing sequel, based on Tokyo Mew Mew and its disappointing sequel Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode.
  • Sleeping Dogs has the Sun On Yee and 18K triads, standing in for Real Life Hong Kong triads Sun Yee On and 14K
  • The Walking Dead repeatedly takes advantage of the stylized graphics to disguise nonsense names as proper brand names. For example, one part of Season Two has you distracting walkers by honking the horn of a "CHOVET" truck which, thanks to the smudges and dirt, looks almost indistinguishable from "Chevrolet".
  • The intro to Interstate '82 reveals that retired Auto-Vigilante Groove Champion drinks Dan Jackal's Bourbon (rather than Jack Daniels' Tennessee Whiskey). And then there are all the cars - the Courcheval Manta, the Phaedra Clydesdale, and the Reliable J to name just a few.
  • Ratchet: Deadlocked (part of the Ratchet & Clank series) has the "Vox" network (founded by Gleeman Vox, the game's Big Bad). Originally an illegal TV networknote , Vox had apparently become a legal network by the time the events of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time take place.note 
  • Grottos and Gremlins, board game of choice of the Nerd clique in Bully. The devs had wanted to feature it as a playable arcade game, in a similar style to Gauntlet, but this was dropped due to time constraints.
  • Wall Street Kid ran on this. It's about buying stock in very familiar-sounding companies (Carnivore Cruise Lines, Rattel Toys, Pan Nam flights, etc.).

    Visual Art 
  • In 1997, artist Andy Cox put up a series of posters at the San Francisco State University streetcar stop, lampooning Citibank's "In Your Dreams" billboard campaign. ("The posters featured such figures as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Che Guevara with the artist's slogans replacing the bank's ad copy. The Guevara piece, for example, states, 'In your dreams, everyone is treated equally.... And your bank sponsors socialist revolutions.'" —File Room.org.) Cox spelled it "Citybank" and made the logo an eight-pointed starburst (instead of the real four-pointed one). (Citibank still called the university president, threatening a lawsuit, and he ordered them taken down. They were moved to the university's Art Department Gallery.)

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Inanimate Insanity has the MePhones, which are clearly meant to be like Apple's iPhones. Inanimate Insanity II also has the MePad, designed like the iPad.
    • Episode 8 of II2 also includes a Bland Name variant of the Apple corporation, which is, as you'd expect, Meeple. Its' creator is Steve Cobs.
    • Most object shows don't bother creating Bland Name Products, instead choosing to use the product's actual name (the host of one object show is a Wii U GamePad, and its logo is used on its face), II being the exception.
  • Klay World has Co-Co Cola.
  • Dr. Havoc's Diary has Playtoy magazine.

    Webcomics 
  • The Optimist features Stabbucks Coffee in this strip.
  • User Friendly had "Snurf" guns in several early strips, as well as Bigbucks Coffee.
  • YU+ME: dream has "IHOW", the "International House Of Waffles", as well as "Wahoo.com".
  • Dork Tower features this frequently, especially for RPGs and board games. Examples include Warhamster, Travailler, Dungeons & Dragoons, and Vampire: The Groveling.
  • Megatokyo has the company names "Lockart" and "Cubesoft".
  • Pops up in the background of Punch an' Pie, most memorably the shopping bags from "Warm Mention" (Hot Topic).
  • In Tower of God, Yu Han-sung loves his instant coffee which is totally not a rip-off from Korea's most popular instant coffee brand.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • The series does this with the trademarked wizard names from Dungeons & Dragons, attributing the "Bigby's" spells to either "Bixby" or "Bugsy" instead. Likewise, Mordenkainen's Disjunction is referred as simply Disjunction. A character who was a clear copy of a D&D property (with a name of the original character's scrambled up) was dragged away by lawyers in mid-fight. He later returned under the loophole of "parody is protected speech".
    • We also see a social network for clerics called Macebook.
    • Then there's SerfWay (instead of "Subway").
    • Don't forget Quest Buy.
    • Early gags where Durkon is seen as a box of Band-Aids and Elan as a can of Diet Coke were genericized as Bandages and Diet Cola in the print version.
  • So far, The FAN has brought us the electronics brand "Sunny" and the "Yeskia" mobile phones (complete with a provider called "Lemon" that even becomes plot-relevant at one point). An early episode mentions an online messenger called "Yippy Courier".
  • Sequential Art has MMORPG Realm of Lorcraft and 3D building game Cubeminer.
    • This comic is rife with slight respellings of product names. Pip uses an online auction site called eBuy. The phone book is called the “Hello Pages.” It happens with movies and video games, too: the Wintendo Pee (as well as the handheld Wintendo BS), its rival gamemaker Saga; Arkham Lockdown, Contemporary Warfare, All Saints Boulevard, Skyroam, the oft-mentioned Temple Raider. Films like Far Trek, Nightlight, The Metrix (and its sequels, The Metrix: Rebooted and The Metrix: Rotations).
  • Averted in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery. The characters have no problem mentioning real brands, and at one point a real-life item becomes a major plot point.
  • Selkie has Selkie wondering whether she can watch movies on Flixnet (an obvious take on Netflix) at home.
  • The Whiteboard: If you look closely at the background, you can see Doc carrying a Khil chainsaw, while more recently Jinx can be seen with his brand new Khil Jr. chainsaw. Clearly a pastiche of Stihl and Skil power tools.
  • El Goonish Shive featured a chase through a "Swedekea" store. "Salty Crackers Comics" counts too; there's a regional comics chain around Chicago called "Graham Crackers". There's also the American Cake movie, a reference to the movie American Pie, but with the plot of The Brady Bunch Movie.
  • In Everyday Heroes, Mr. Mighty once held a civilian job "hauling concrete blocks at SuperHomeCenterMart". Several strips also show "Sundo's" coffee ("sun" = "star", "dough" = "money" = "bucks").
  • In this Fuzzy Five strip, Otto is using a search engine called Searchy with a suspiciously familiar design.
  • There are no fewer than seven examples in this Kevin & Kell strip.
  • The Titular character of Moxs Blog uses "CRADOS" instead of the real-life translation environment tool "TRADOS".
  • In Rusty and Co., who doesn't want a can of Cloaker-Cola while listening to music on their Eye-pad and checking Feysbook using Druid?
  • Moon Crest 24: KB Games and Cool Topic.
  • Dr. McNinja's first published foe was against the fast-food clown everybody is familiar with: McBonald! (It actually was Ronald McDonald when first published; Chris Hastings later touched up the original chapters, so he could continue to use the character without fear of litigation.)
  • Pretty much every product in Sluggy Freelance is one of these. The PlayStayShun 3 console, the Years of Yarncraft MMORPG, the pirate-themed coffee shop Swashbucks, the list goes on.
  • Parasite Galaxy does this with pretty much everything: WcDonalds, Starducks, Microhard. Even the names of countries get changed.
  • This Master of the Obvious comic, with a young Stan Lee, has "Kentucky Fried Something" in the last panel, with the slogan "We Do Something Right".
  • Knights of Buena Vista has "Sorcery: The Rendezvous" for Magic: The Gathering.
  • These abound in Squid Row. For instance, Randie often eats Pop-N Tarts. Other brand names are respelled but still recognizable.
  • Jason And The Princes Of The Universe gives us "Red Yak".
  • Woo Hoo shows parody / joke brands and logos every time a brand appears (like "Technical Virgin Megastore").
  • In Grrl Power, Sydney is exhausted after running laps, so her training officer gives her a bottle of Power Ade "Joule Juice".
  • Alien Hand Syndrome has Pizza Hat (Link contains bad language).
    • Erin's smartphone appears to be a Pear. You know, as opposed to...
  • Walky is a big time fan of cheese Nachitos, along with the actual Taco Bell. (The Taco Bells in Dumbing of Age sell Nachito shell tacos.)
  • In Rain, Video game systems and games tend to be lawyer-friendly versions of their real life counterparts. For instance, the "Super Nintendo" entertainment system instead becomes the "Super Funtendo" entertainment system, and the game Battletoads becomes "Fighter Frogs". And it's just as hard as ever.
  • In Ozy and Millie, Stephan collects Gathering: The Obsession cards. The brand name says it all.
  • Please Forgive Me!!! features the "Goofle" search engine, sticks of "Pocko" snacks, and a "redthing" (or "hotbox") kiosk.
  • The Comic Adventures of Left & Right: Discussed in "Parody Brand Names", where it's mocked with the notion that companies generally wouldn't sue nobody comic artists over using their product names anyway.

    Web Original 
  • Foamy the Squirrel of Illwillpress commonly uses brand substitutes: Snell Computer company, the Fatkins Diet, or StarSchmucks Coffee.
  • Tales Of The Starbuck Avenger averts this, obviously.
  • In the fourth episode of Blamimation, Kris and Scott travel to the digital world of Tro-er, Fron...where they ride lightcyc-er, glowbikes for a while until Scott merges with the Master Control Frogram.
  • Froghand, from the Shitty Vaporwave Indie Game Reviews:
    Maybe I'll make an actual Outrun art project, involving, shit, I don't know. Hotline Miami recreated entirely in web languages. But then I'll get striked by the copyright vultures, so I'll call it "Bob Lime Boob Slamming" or what have you.
  • In We Are All Pokémon Trainers, there are several particularly "recognizable" brands and names such as Chatter (Twitter), Oddish vs. Dusknoirs, Fallout: New Nimbasa or 23Js.
  • The fourth-grade section of the educational game Proofreading Power features the shows Picklemon, This Old Room, America's Slowest Videos, Cinnamon Street, The Fussy Family and Bathtubbies on a Saturday morning schedule.
  • Yandere High School has crab as a substitute word for many things: Youcrab, Gamecrab, etc. Also "jPhone", and "Fumblr". The second season introduces the "Galaxy Nexus Crab" somewhat subtly.
  • SCP Foundation, SCP-1160 ("Effective Containment"). The true nature of SCP-1160 changes depending on what people believe about it. The Foundation keeps SCP-1160 manageable by distributing "Super Coco Pows" cereal, which has an SCP-1160-like mascot that tries to steal the cereal from children. "Super Coco Pows" is based on General Mills' "Cocoa Puffs" cereal, and the mascot is based on Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, the mascot for Cocoa Puffs.

    Western Animation 
  • American Dad! has the department stores C. J. Neppey (J. C. Penny), Big Buy (Best Buy), and CostGo (Costco).
    • In the Halloween episode, Francine mentions going to Tar-Jays (Target?) and picking up some Huggies.
  • Arthur:
    • A Stardoes appears in "Arthur's Perfect Christmas".
    • Another episode has a thinly disguised Brosnan-era James Bond film with the hero named James Houndnote .
    • And of course there's Bionic Bunny, who is totally not Superman. (Though he has a different origin story from what little we see of his show; apparently he's a cyborg instead of an alien, making him more a reference to The Six Million Dollar Man) A later episode has a show called Dark Bunny, seemingly a counterpart to Batman.
    • Teletubbies has been parodied three times on the show. Once as the show "Love Ducks" in season 4, "Vidiboobies" in Season 5, and "Silly Squirrels" in Season 10. Additionally the same episode to feature the "Vidiboobies" also featured an un-named parody of Rugrats
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King": The use of Metronex instead of Rolex:
    Batman: What kind of saboteur uses a $6000 Metronex to trigger a time bomb?
    Alfred: A saboteur with too much money?
  • The Boondocks:
    • The episode "A Date With The Health Inspector" features the search for the "Xbox Killer". Though dialogue referred to the Xbox by name, the console itself was drawn with a Y-shaped motif on top in place of the X-shaped motif found on real Xboxes.
    • The episode "Smokin' With Cigarettes" featured Creepy Child Lamilton Taeshawn beating up his grandmother at a local "Walli-Mart." Curiously, Wal-Mart is referred to by name in later episodes.
    • In "The Fried Chicken Flu" we have Bluto's (Popeyes), Temple's Chicken (Church's Chicken) and Chick-Le-Fay (Chick-fil-a).
  • In the ChalkZone episode "That Thing You Drew", Rudy Tabootie's favorite comic book artist "Drew Yerface" has a "Beep" in his driveway.
  • Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers doesn't make a lot of use of this trope, but it does have an episode ("The Case of the Cola Cult") partly revolving around a beverage named "Coo-Coo Cola"note . While there isn't any Coke-like logo seen anywhere, the theme song mentioned that "it's bottled in Pensacola" where the Coca-Cola Company did have a bottling plant at that time.
  • In one episode of Clarence, Ms. Shoop is seen reading a book titled Tints of Brown.
  • The opening titles of The Critic once spoofed 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the film's famous monolith turning out to be a vending machine from which early man buys a can of "Pensa Cola".
  • Daria
    • A very funny example: Fuzzy Wuzzy Wee Bits (Beanie Babies).
    • In one of the movies, there's Lackluster Video (Blockbuster Video).
    • Plus, "Deuce Hardware" (Ace Hardware).
  • Cam of Detentionaire has broken phones over his frustration at losing at a game called "Disgruntled Pigeons".
  • Dexter's Laboratory:
    • Dee Dee owns dolls of Darbie and Ben instead of Barbie and Ken.
    • Dee Dee is also a fan of Pony Puff Princess, a reference to My Little Pony G1. One of the ponies was even voiced by a voice actress who voiced a pony character in one of the cartoons.
  • Doug:
    • In the episode "Doug's Lost Weekend", Doug acquires a "Super Pretendo" video game console.
    • A background shot in another episode reveals that Bluffington has a "Worst Eastern" hotel.
    • A Disney episode shows Beebe Bluff with a laptop whose brand wasn't mentioned, but has the logo of a beet (a Running Gag in the show) and a UI that is suspiciously that of classic Mac OS.
  • One Family Guy Halloween episode gives us this exchange near the end:
    Stewie: Brian, you took me out on my first Halloween tonight, and you showed me an exciting time. And for that, I'm going to let you pick out some candy from my bag.
    Brian: Oh, thanks.
    Stewie: And keep in mind we can't use any brand names, due to advertising concerns.
    Brian: Right, okay, I'll have a Mr. Wiffle bar, a Kooky Nut Pop, some Gyminyms, uh, a Zip-Zap, a Choco-Buddy, uh, a $64000 Bar, a Not-A-Finger, and a Dawkin's Peanut Butter Disk.
    Stewie: God, I hate television...
    • Similar dialogue appeared in "Cool Hand Peter", which is currently the page quote:
    Peter: Boy, I feel like I haven't eaten in a week. Hey, if we pass a McDaniel's or a Burger Queen, let's hop out.
    Quagmire: Oh, that's right. We're on television.
    Joe: Oh, I'd love a flame-broiled Bopper!
    Quagmire: This is so frustrating. We all know what we're talking about!
    • Later:
    Joe: I put in a call from the McDaniel's payphone while you guys were getting that nine-piece Chicken McFingers and those Diet Conks and those Fresh Fries.
    Quagmire: Oh, come o- Th-they don't own French fries!
  • The dog food in Feast is "Ames" (Iams) brand.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: "Bloo's Brothers" has Mac and Bloo excited about getting tickets to the "Ice Charades". Lampshaded in the lyrics to the Ice Charades theme song:
    Oh, Ice Charades, you're so icy and fun!
    Oh, Ice Charades, it's not the "capade" one!
  • Futurama
    • There are many "futuristic" versions of real trademarks that have no relation to the plot. They include MmmTV, 8-Twelve, loudspeakers from Sonya, Admiral Crunch, Archduke Chocula, 7^11 (Open 28 Hours), πKEA! (Enjoy your affordable Swedish crap!), (Kid)Nappster, Iffy Pop popcorn, Mom's eyePhone and Taco Bellvue Hospital: Normal, healthy baby? Supersize it for 79 cents!
      Patient: How's my tumor, doctor?
      Chihuahua in Doctor Clothes: ...Grande.
    • The "Box" Network which cancelled Planet Express (whose neon "B" on their building logo once glitched to look like an "F") is demonized after Futurama was cancelled by the Fox Network. Their tirades against Box also introduce us to Carton Network.
    • Futuristic product placement is even used in the closing logo, which reads "30th CENTURY FOX TELEVISION" (or "30th TELEVISION" in syndication)
  • This makes up a majority of the "loser candy" in the Gravity Falls Halloween episode, including Gummy Chairs and Mr. Adequate Bars.
  • On The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Mandy is seen playing "President Evil" on Billy's Lamecube.
  • Jem:
    • In the two part episode, The Stingers Hit Town, one scene involves Jem and the Holograms being honored at the "Rock Hard" Cafe.
    • The music video to "Designing Woman" is set in a shoe store and features several knockoff shoe brand names. Such examples include "Shebak", "CA NIKE", "Raddidis", and "TUNA".
  • Jimmy Two-Shoes gives us Spew Tube, which sounds like a Shock Site.
  • One episode of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures had Race breaking into a building using a Nisa (Visa) credit card. And then there's CNNN. "As close as it can get" is right...
  • Kaeloo:
    • The show's characters, particularly Stumpy and Pretty, use a social networking site called Fakebook, an obvious parody of Facebook.
    • On occasions, they play a game called "Me-Me-Nopoly" (Monopoly).
    • One episode had the gang use "Gogol-Maps"note , a parody of Google Maps.
  • Kim Possible had many:
    • Bueno Nacho is an analogue of Taco Bueno.
    • The supermarket chain Smarty-Mart, a blatant reference to Wal-Mart.
    • Kim goes to see Chick Flick The Memo Pad with Shego. (The Notebook)
    • Cuddle Buddies (Beanie Babies), Club Banana (Banana Republic)
    • Drakken gets himself on American Starmaker as part of an Evil Plan.
    • Towards the end, there's a magazine called Humans (probably a stand-in for People magazine).
    • There's also Ballroom With B Actors, and celebs like the Holsen twins, Britina and Oh Boyz.
    • Sometimes this would be inconsistent: Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are mentioned by name, where others make a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo, and Ron has the Sony Ericsson ringtone.
  • King of the Hill
    • A number of scenes take place in Luly's Cafeteria. The restaurant and its logo are a blatant pastiche of Luby's, but odds are that viewers who haven't been to Texas have probably never heard of it.
    • They also have the Mega-Lo-Mart, which has driven out independent businesses, including Hank's favorite fishing supply store (but their batteries are sure a good deal).
    • In the episode, "Death Picks Cotton", the cast eats at a Benihana knock-off called Tokiyaki.
  • In The Littles episode "The Wrong Stuff", at least one of the microchips in the space shuttle's computer is made by "Sany".
  • Splurt Soda (a Squirt Expy) seems to be popular in futuristic Jamaica in Major Lazer.
  • In Metalocalypse, Nathan Explosion has a dream about working at Dimmu Burger, both a parody of Burger King and a shout-out to real life metal band Dimmu Borgir.
  • The Modifyers had Agent Xero watching The Glitterfunk Family, Bitch-Slap It On, Clueless-mon (a cross between Pokémon and Clueless), TROM and Brickorious (because Victorious and The Modifyers are TV shows since those two are belonging to Nickelodeon and Viacom respectively).
  • Muppet Babies has a Pretendo in the episode "It's Only Pretendo".
  • In ¡Mucha Lucha!, the Flea's parents run a donut shop called Slammin' Donuts.
  • In My Life as a Teenage Robot, Nora references Radio Shed (Radio Shack).
  • Many of Nicktoons TV's earlier station IDs featured late-1990s and early-2000s Nickelodeon IDs with the "Nicktoons" name put in.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Over the credits of "Phineas' Birthday Clip-a-Thon", we hear Candace saying "Mom!" repeatedly, to the tune of the theme song. At the end, she says, "Mom! Phineas and Ferb digitally tuned my voice!" (rather than AutoTuned.)
  • Pinky and the Brain are occasionally seen watching television; one of the brands used is Zony.
  • In the 2010 version of Pound Puppies, Mrs. McLeish entered her puppy into the Northminster Dog Show after being challenged by her rival.
  • One episode of Regular Show had Bensen visit a bookstore called Corners, a parody of the now-defunct Borders.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show
    • In the episode "Sven Hoek," Stimpy's board game collection includes "Scribble," "Monotony," "Purecheesey," and "Misery Date."
    • Also, in "Hermit Ren" some "Urethra Franklin" albums are mentioned.
  • Rick and Morty do it with movies on a regular basis:
    • In "Total Rickall," Rick is remembering a barbecue he hosted. He mentions that he's like Tom Cruise in "Cuisine" instead of Cocktail. Played with because he keeps asking if "Cuisine" is the right name, though he never gets an answer.
    • In "Auto Erotic Assimilation", when Morty and Summer are scared of being killed by an advancing mob, they chant "there's no place like home" from "the Dorothy and the tiny people movie."
    • "Ricksy Business" contains this exchange alluding to Little Richard and the opening line to "Tutti Frutti":
    Rick: It's like that old song, "blomp blomp-a noop noop a-noop noop noop". You guys know that song? From Tiny Rogerts? You never heard of it? You know, the black effeminate guy from the '50s? No-nobody? A-all right, whatever.
  • Rugrats had Pego and a flashback episode shows babies Drew and Stu as fans of The Blocky and Oxwinkle Show.
  • SheZow had a Pink Lightsaber in which the female superhero uses.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield", Homer Simpson knows that he can trust the "Sorny", "Panaphonics", and "Magnetbox" brand TVs that you find in an outlet store. Then again, he's an idiot and Bart was complaining how they were brand-name ripoffs.
    • A sci-fi film series called "Cosmic Wars"... which is odd, because the show has made many references to Star Wars.
    • In "Lisa the Tree-Hugger", they also have Kentucky Fried Panda, named like a mash-up of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Panda Express.
    "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! it was finger ling-ling good!"
    • This show also has several analogous video games like Dash Dingo in "Lisa Gets an 'A'" and Grand Theft Walrus in The Simpsons Movie.
    • More recently, there was Mapple Computers, whose CEO was named Steve Mobs, which manufactured the MyPod portable music player which could download songs and TV episodes from MyTunes. Oh, and its logo is an apple with two bites taken out of it. And yet, they felt comfortable flat-out namechecking Microsoft in the same episode.
      • Then one of the kids in the series owns an Apple Newton, except that its name wasn't mentioned and the logo was that of an Apple with a worm in it.
    • Bart, saying goodbye to the contents of his toy box:
    "Goodbye Spirogram. Goodbye Sketch-N-Etch. Goodbye Ravenous Ravenous Rhinos, Duopoly, Parchoosey, Humor Putty, and Sock-'em Knock-'em Cyborgs..."
    • And, of course, the Malibu Stacy dolls.
    • And in "Treehouse of Horror XXI" (see the "Quotes" tab), the names of the board games that Bart and Milhouse look over are Taffyland, Drops and Risers, Consternation, Ravernous Ravernous Rhinos, Mouse Catch, Battleboat, Funopoly, Crate of Apes, Yahtzu, and Tiddlywonks. Plus a scene from a Clue-like game: "Colonel Ketchup, I say it was you that killed him in the parlor with the letter opener."
    • Homer orders these toppings for his ice cream cone: Snickels, Gooey Bears, Charlottesville Chew, Nice & Many, Kat Kit, Hershel's Smooches, Mrs. Badbar, and Milk Dudes.
    • "Million Dollar Maybe" features the Funtendo Zii, as well as the couch gag for "Lisa Goes Gaga".
    • Many of their stores are parodies of real-world stores, with a few name knock-offs: Sprawl-Mart, CostMo. Oddly their store Try-N-Save has a similar sign design as a Chicago business Buy-N-Save which may have been established a couple years later.
    • "Hungry Hungry Homer"
    Bart: Ow! Why did I get this LEGO shirt?
    Marge: Don't you mean Blocko shirt?
    Bart: Right, right. Blocko shirt.
    • Parodied in the episode 'Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life', the family travels and drives by McDonalds, Walmart and 7-11, with Bart saying "I've never heard of any of these places."
      • And again in "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer", where it's revealed that Krusty actually pays off the mob to keep McDonalds and Burger King out of Springfield.
      • And again in "22 Short Films About Springfield", where police officer Eddie talks with Lou and Chief Wiggum about a McDonald's he went to in Shelbyville.
    • "In the Name of the Grandfather" has Oirish knockoffs of IT companies like Mick-rosoft, Hewlett-Fitzpackard and Cisc'O Systems, in a scene where Lisa is talking about how Ireland has risen to the forefront of technology.
    • Maggie's plotline in "The Nightmare After Krustmas" involves an Elf on the Shelf stand-in called Gnome In Your Home. Meanwhile, Homer gets a juicer for Christmas and uses it to blend N&N's candy, a Kat-Kit bar, and Fruit Loops cereal.
    • Subverted with Focusyn in "Brother's Little Helper", which seems to be a stand-in for Ritalin until the end of the episode where Marge says she's getting Bart off of Focusyn... and back on Ritalin.
  • In Smeshariki, Losyash uses the operating system "Okna 96", a parody of Windows 95/98 with a similar boot screen. ("Okna" is Russian for "Windows".)
  • South Park:
    • South Park goes as close as it can get to real brands, with names like "HBC" (NBC), "Harbucks Coffee", "Wall-Mart", and "J-Mart", as well as the "Okama Gamesphere", a pastiche of the Nintendo GameCube. Due to the occasional Product Placement deal, however, some episodes have featured stuff like the PSP or the Nintendo Wii...plus, you know, World of Warcraft.
    • The "Fantastic Easter Special" episode features a CONY television set.
    • And of course, Cheesy Poofs, originally intended to be Cheetos Puffs.
    • The episode "Stanley's Cup" does refer to the actual Pepsi Center, plus the National Hockey League's Colorado Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings. However, the team uniforms use the town names instead of the logos◊, Reebok (NHL's uniform provider) is disguised as "CLK", and the scoreboard has generic logos. (amusingly, South Park Studios has long provided its talents\characters to an NHL team, the Los Angeles Kings)
    • In "All About Mormons", Gary and his family are shown playing a board game called LIVING, a parody of Hasbro's The Game Of Life. Kyle, Stan and Kenny are also shown playing this game in "Cartman Sucks".
  • Played with in Steven Universe; Steven's current home game system is a DOLPHIN, which in real life was the production codename for the Nintendo GameCube. The system itself is hooked up to a SUMY-brand television. Word of God, however, is that this series takes place in an Alternate History to our own, so these may be actual names, rather than knockoffs. The characters are also seen watching videos on TubeTube, and posting "cheeps" (which correspond to actual tweets on an official Character Blog).
  • In Super Mario World, the giant television in "Rock TV" is made by Koopasonic (spoofing Panasonic).
  • Teen Titans has the GameStation. Its spinoff, Teen Titans Go! has the Pretty Pretty Pegasus media franchise (three guesses what it's based on).
  • Totally Spies!
    • One of the stores advertised in establishing shots of Beverly Hills Mall is "Kacy's".
    • In one episode, the spies pose as reporters for a (made up?) magazine called "Geography International".
    • In another, one scene has "Armando" (Armani) and "Bucca" (likely a parody of Gucci) stores.
  • The Transformers: Certain characters whose toys originally came from Diaclone transformed into specific sponsored race cars. Mirage turned into the Gitanes-sponsored no. 26 Ligier JS-11, Jazz turns into the Martini Racing no. 4 Porsche 935 Turbo, and Wheeljack turns into the Alitalia-sponsored Lancia Stratos Turbo No. 539. To avoid infringement, the brand names were changed to: "Citanes", "Martinii", and "Alitalla". Unreleased in Transformers was another toy using the Stratos mold but with a different head and bearing the deco from real cars' tenure under Marlboro (changed to "Marlboor").
    • Looks to be averted with TakaraTomy's upcoming Masterpiece Wheeljack, which features more accurate Alitalia livery, with the correct spelling - if Takara's promotional pictures are accurate.
    • Inverted with the original Megatron toy, whose alt-mode was a Walther P38 pistol, and features the Walther company's logo.
  • The Weekenders has an amusing incident of this. The main characters wanted to go see a sci-fi movie about cosmic battles a long time ago, but were disappointed when they realized they read the movie's title wrong and instead saw a two-hour long documentary about escalators: Stair Wars.
  • An advertising poster for "Coca Curla" can be seen in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon "Solid Ivory".
  • The New Woody Woodpecker Show (1999 Fox Kids series) has "Butterscottie Finger-Pies" and they can be seen at "Lash and Nash's Cash and Dash".
  • We Bare Bears:
    • In "Panda's Sneeze," one of the sites featuring Panda's viral video is Humgrub, a Clickbait Gag at the expense of the Internet news site Buzzfeed.
    • The bears watch funny Internet videos on Everyone's Tube and watch their favorite TV shows and movies on Cineweb.
  • Barbie in a Mermaid Tale features such popular stores as "Fred Seagull", "Bloomingtails", and "Seaphora".
  • Street Football: In one episode, Eloise makes a web search at Geeglo.
  • Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog does this in "Sonic's Song", which features a record album by a band called "KIZZ", complete with a similar logo. Another one appears in the episode "Mobius 5000" with a brand of gasoline called "86", complete with ball logonote .

    Real Life 
  • Late for the Sky Productions, a board game manufacturer in Ohio, used bland name products based on Hasbro's Monopoly product brand.
  • Because the name Super Bowl (along with "Super Sunday") is trademarked by the NFL, advertisers, businesses, and newspapers are strictly forbidden (well, not forbidden, but the NFL is so powerful and litigious it's not worth putting up a fight) to use the name in any promotions or advertisements. However, it is not illegal to use such terms as "Big Game Sunday", "Big Football Game", etc. in campaigns centered on the Super Bowl.
    • One ad for snack foods (or beer?) played with this, by having one character give out charades clues for "Super Bowl" and the others cluelessly guessing things like "Blooper Mole".
    • In a truly moustache-twirling display of villainous greed, the NFL actually attempted to trademark "The Big Game", giving Disney a bit of competition for the honor of having the unluckiest PR department in the business world. Luckily for every ad, movie, TV show, and piece of literature to use that term, the NFL's request was turned down, due in part to intervention from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, whose annual football game has long been known as The Big Game.
  • Manufacturers of some counterfeit products make small changes to names, logos, and other trademarks. Some examples can be found on Engadget's "Keepin' It Real Fake" series. An example seen by this editor would be a "Game Bay" cartridge made by "Nintende(TN)".
    • Many companies that manufacture unlicensed accessories for the Nintendo Wii mark them as being for the "Wü".
  • From The '50s through The '70s, it was common for cars to have names spelled out in separate chromed diecast letters along the hood, trunklid or fenders, bolted or riveted in place. Urban legend had it that these would sometimes be misspelled by the factory workers. Documented evidence does exist of one division's nameplate being placed on one part of the car and a different one on another (such as "Buick" on the grill and "Oldsmobile" on the trunk lid). Most common of all was their letters falling off, leaving the driver with a Fo_d, C_evrolet, or even Do_g_.
    • It's also quite common for people to alter the badging themselves even in modern times. Toyota trucks especially get this treatment, with the large TOYOTA lettering on the tailgate being altered to either show TOY or even YO.
  • There's a whole market for imaginary products in the form of 3D assets that people purchase, especially for use with the Poser home animation program. While there's no real problem with using something trademarked, many trademarked logos are also copyrighted. Of course, at the same time, people tend to want things based on stuff they're familiar with, either from popular fiction or from the real world, and so this leads to "almost-but-not-quite" products, often with "Pose" or "Poser" in the name, many of which can be found at Renderosity, ShareCG, TurboSquid and elsewhere.
  • KFG◊, which would be Kentucky Fried.....uh...Goat? Groundhog? Gerbil? Gorilla? Gecko? Gazelle? Goldfish? Grizzly? Guppy? Galapagos Tortoise? note 
    • Or, KLG.◊
    • There was once a whole site dedicated to bad rip-offs of KFC. The attempts are so bad that the author's reactions range from mildly sarcastic to outright spittle-flecked ranting.
    • And Pizza Huh. Huh?
      • In Blackpool, there is (or was) a "Pizza Hat". Even the British get into the bland-name fun. (See also Webcomics above.)
      • We are also proud to boast Kansas Fried Chicken.
      • Szolnok, Hungary has a restaurant called "Pizza 6". In Hungarian, the number 6 is spelled hat and pronounced like "hut".
      • Recife, Brazil had a burger place called "Suburbway" with the same green/yellow colour scheme. 3 months later, the company also known as "underground path" sued them and they had to change name or face legal action.
    • Bucksstar Coffee.◊
    • The Kennedy Fried Chicken (quasi-)chain, common in inner-city neighborhoods across the US East Coast (it's widely considered, perhaps unfairly, "hood" chicken) and commonly run by very patriotic immigrants from Afghanistan or elsewhere in South Asia, sports a predominantly-red color scheme. It's a rather loose chain, so individual restaurants can and do take different names; most commonly, if they aren't "Kennedy Fried Chicken" they call themselves "Crown Fried Chicken," but a Washington, DC location has "Kantouri Fried Chicken."
    • In Mexico, just over the California border, is a restaurant called Kentucky Fried Buches. (Buches are fried chicken necks. Yum.)
    • Could be Kentucky Fried Gallus.
  • There are a lot of these in open-air markets and bazaars in the Philippines, which tend to feature a lot of knockoffs from China, Taiwan, and other neighboring nations. A Power Pop Girls towel, a Jurassic Wars set (a WWII soldier inexplicably packaged with a pink plastic velociraptor), and Guchi handbags among several others.
  • There was also a pirate game company named Chintendo.
  • Coby was a legitimate electronics brand that sold its products in big-name retail stores and even had its products featured in their ads. That said, take a gander at its logo. Look familiar?
  • The film studio The Asylum specializes in making low-budget movies that vaguely resemble recent blockbusters (dubbed Mockbusters by film critics). Some examples include Pirates of Treasure Island, Snakes on a Train, The Da Vinci Treasure, and Transmorphers.
  • Can't help pointing out the absurd similarity between the name Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist. For those of you who still don't get it: The Sierra Mountain chain is a series of mountains and dew and mist are both types of surface condensation. Quite understandable, however, as both are made by Pepsi.
  • There's a legitimate electronics company whose name sounds like an example: Magnasonic. And it makes total sense if you know Latin: "Magna" = "large or great", while "sonic" = "sound". "Pan" (as in "Panasonic") = "all", and "vox" (as in "Magnavox") = ..."voice"? Maybe?
    • There's one that's a blatant rip-off of NEC: A legitimate electronics company called MEC (Malaysian Electronics Corporation). And weirder brands like Panashiba and Tobishi.
    • Enercell batteries sold at RadioShack always seemed to me like a cross between Energizer and Duracell.
    • Palsonic is another one, as well as Pensonic.
  • This commercial from March 25, 1980 is for a product actually called "Arthritis Pain Formula", with extremely-generic packaging and promotion. Later spots like this and this were clearer that it was from the maker of Anacin. Oh, and it's still around today (albeit in far less generic packaging).
  • Many games on pirate NES multicarts have their titles changed or removed.
  • Occasionally when franchise stores close down and are bought up by smaller businesses, the new store ends up with a suspiciously similar name, especially if they're selling a similar product. This seems to be as much about saving money by only making minor alterations to a sign as it is momentarily confusing people into stopping in. Not Fooling Anybody offers up such examples as a Mister Donut becoming Master Donut, A Texaco becoming Exaco (yes, they actually just ripped the T off the signs), and most nonsensically, a Baskin Robbins becoming Basket Rabbit.
  • Exidy (early arcade game developer) → Exide (battery brand).
  • Stuart Ashen comes across these all the time. The most notorious examples are the POP Station, which later got a spiritual successor in the PCP Station, the Neo Double Games (DS) and the "Chintendo" Vii, a bland redesign of the Wii. It should be noted that neither comes close to matching the feature set of its brand-name counterpart.
    • There's also the infamous Penesamig batteries that have been mentioned a few times since their initial on-screen appearance.
  • Ligao is a cheap Chinese ripoff of LEGO.
  • Dr. Pepper-flavored generic soft drinks almost always contain "Dr." or "Mr." in the name.
    • When Coca-Cola introduced their Pepper knockoff, they tried to avert this by calling it Peppo, but got sued for trademark infringement and went with the name Mr. Pibb instead. In the 2000s they rebranded it as Pibb Xtra.
  • The Maths Quest Prelim Course textbook (an Australian maths textbook) has references to GOI insurance, J.L. Booker, and Roy Black real estate, just to name a few.
  • The HiPhone. Take a wild guess what it's a rip-off of, and which country made the rip-off.
    • There is also a Blackberry knockoff called Blaokborry.
    • PearOS was a Linux distribution intended to be a knock-off of Mac OS X. Apple was quick to purchase the company and fire the entire staff to ax the threat before it could bud. The money from the purchase was reinvested on ElementaryOS.
  • Pocky has many imitations. Here's one◊.
  • Wacky Packages do this for a living, which got them in trouble with Morton Salt over their parody "Moron Salt" (but that's not for here).
  • The Earl Hays Press, a company that sells props for Live-Action TV series (it seems mostly stuff that can be produced by printing), does this for some of its products, such as the magazines Playpen and Earth Geographic or several of the food packages.
  • The discount grocery store chain Aldi has a lot of this in their stores. An example is "Cinnamon Crunch Squares" (Cinnamon Toast Crunch).
    • To the point it can be a surreal experience walking around an Aldi: almost every product looks almost, but not exactly, like the brand-leader product. The effect is that everything is a bit... off.
  • In the Philippines again, there's the McDonald's combined with the local competitor to produce McDolibee. And it was a barbecue stand!
  • Colombia has many examples.
    • In Bogotá, Surtidora de Aves was a well-known chain of fried chicken fast food restaurants. In the mid-'90s there were around 600 small business which copied the name and logo of the company (Surtiaves, Surtiaves 22, Surtidora de Aves de la 22, Suriaves, Surtidorado de Aves 22...). This effectively drove the company to change the name to "Compañía del Sabor".
  • Hunky Dorys crisps received a knockoff called Okey Dokeys.
  • You can buy a Polex watch and then modify the P a little bit if you want.
  • Kennedy Fried Chicken is an odd subversion. You'd really think it's a knockoff of a certain better-known KFC, but it's not.
  • After the fall of Gaddafi, many businesses unofficially sporting Western-oriented brands have popped up in Libya. (For example, Uncle Kentucky Fried Chicken, sometimes spelled Kentaki.) The reason is that even though the civil war ended, international companies are still wary about doing business in Libya due to the uncertain political climate.
  • Egypt seems to have a renamed copy of most branded alcoholic drinks (though the contents tend to be either 'dark spirit', 'clear spirit' or 'beer')... Becardoi (strapline: Heart Good Rom!), Gordoons Gin and Johnny Waler to name but a few.
  • The town of Zilwaukee, Michigan, located just north of Saginaw, got its name in a deliberate attempt to get people to confuse it with Milwaukee, Wisconsin and settle in Michigan instead.
  • Vaping paraphernalia seller Veppo has a flavor of e-liquid called "My Burro," a spoof of the Malboro cigarette brand.
  • "Burger Queen" really did exist at one point.
  • During The Golden Age of Video Games, some bootlegged arcade games got this treatment, including (but not limited to) "Xevios", "Frog", "Penta" (a knockoff of Pengo), "Masao"note , "Zig Zag", "Moon Ranger" (a Moon Patrol knockoff) and "Gallag".
  • Due to sanctions placed on Iran since the Ayatollah came to power, there have been a number of noteworthy knockoffs of American restaurants, including Pizza Hat, ZFC, and Mash Donald's.

Alternative Title(s): Wc Donalds, Weenie Burgers

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