The Lamentations of Lowry – Chapter 16: Truth in Advertising

A woman sued Cap’n Crunch, or rather Quaker Oats, on the basis that Crunchberries are not actual fruit!

Awesome.

The blog I linked to has a fantastic line:

Judge England also noted another federal court had “previously rejected substantially similar claims directed against the packaging of Fruit Loops [sic] cereal, and brought by these same Plaintiff attorneys.”  He found that their attack on “Crunchberries” should fare no better than their prior claims that “Froot Loops” did not contain real froot.

I tried to grow a froot tree once.

On a similar note, this is an interesting article about the history of Grape Nuts, which are neither grape nor nuts. It’s actually…BREAD. Burned, dried, smashed bread. It makes you manly too.

Has Grape Nuts ever been sued as was the Cap’n? I don’t know, but in posing the question on Instapundit, Ann Althouse prompted this historical bit from Eugene Volokh. Coca-Cola was sued for not actually containing significant amounts of coca, as in the plant from which cocaine is derived. From the Circuit Court’s 1914 opinion:

‘The use of a compound name does not necessarily * * * indicate that the article to which the name is applied contains the substances whose names make up the compound. Thus, soda water contains no soda; the butternut contains no butter; cream of tartar contains no cream; nor milk of lime any milk. Grape fruit is not the fruit of the grape; nor is bread fruit the fruit of bread; the pineapple is foreign to both the pine and the apple; and the manufactured food known as Grape Nuts contains neither grapes nor nuts.‘ …

We conclude that the name Coca Cola as applied to plaintiff’s product, while undoubtedly suggestive, is not so substantially and really deceptive as to invalidate the registered mark.

It’s the pause that refreshes.