They are called Bey Blades and they are a spinning battle top that been on the market before and are flying off the shelves. So why can’t people call them by their correct name? Bey Blade is not a difficult word to pronounce but for some reason it comes out as Blay Blay. Or Blaze Blay. Sometimes Baze Blaze. Blade Blade. Blaze Blaze. And just today I witnessed a woman standing in front of a wall of the nonsensically-named spinners while talking to someone on her cell phone and she re-named them Blaze Blazeds. IT’S RIGHT ON THE PACKAGE!
I call it the Pokey Man Syndrome. Or PMS for short. It started a whole bunch of years ago when the Japanese Pocket Monsters invaded North America. Pokemon was a brilliant shortening of the Pocket Monster brand and it was a hit. Pockets were being filled by the hundreds of thousands with cards and creatures and balls. But then the name change began. Pokey Man. Do you want to get some Pokey Mans? Where are your Pokey Man cards? How much is this Pokey Man worth?
I get that most often parents don’t get it, or they just don’t care enough to bother. It’s just another freaky plastic alien that will jam up the washing machine or have to be pulled from Rover’s jaws. It’s when the kids don’t get it that it becomes disturbing. After all they watch the show. They see the commercials. They go online and watch the flash animation websites that repeat the name of the product hundreds of time a second to be sure that the catchy non-words stuck to the insides of their skulls until at least college. So where is the breakdown happening?
It could just be that the makers of these miniscule monster/robot/vehicles have run out of words to effectively describe their products. The more they make up the worse they get. And it is even more difficult when the origin of the toy is Japanese and doesn’t translate well to begin with. Tamagotch anyone? B-Daman? Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon?
So we are stuck being translaters of un-words to help hapless parents and kids spend their pokemoney on Battle Plastic Transfoma Bot-a-bunnies.
And don’t get me started on Lego. Or lots of Lego. Which is still Lego. Not Legos.
