brand names becoming the product names.

[sistar]

Not sure this is the right section, but here goes, I was thinking the other day about brand names that have come to mean the object, whatever its brand, for example, Hoover for Vacuum cleaner, I can also think of Sellotape, Tippex, Jeep, iPod seems to be moving in that direction, I'm sure there are more, anyone got any ideas?

[Quizmonkey]

Technicolor's an interesting one. People often forget it's a tradename and anglicise it (ie. add a u) when doing a production of Joseph - many a poster seen with the title misspelled.

And no-one seems to have mentioned Post-It Notes.

[Xollob]

I very vaguely remember an article in Private Eye many years ago. The magazine had just received a slap on the wrist from lawyers acting for the Hoover Company for daring to use their eponymous product as a verb (and probably - shock horror - lowercase as well). The magazine simply printed a photograph of the lawyers' letter under a heading that read something like "What a sad way to make a living".

[clarabel82]

Playstation isn't really one, you wouldn't call an X-Box a Playstation would you?

[saanen]

Where I live, we always called a condom a "Durex". Then when I went to Australia I went into a shop and the woman said she would give me some Durex to close a parcel. It turned out she was talking about the product that we call Sellotape.