For more than seven years, I’ve been urging readers to read Tom Junod’s tremendous profile of Mister Rogers, entitled “Can You Say…Hero?”. 21 years after it was first published, Junod’s work remains a wonderfully written piece worthy of your time. I still find myself re-reading every year or two.

This past weekend, I had occasion to do so once again, prior to seeing the new movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”. You’ve probably seen that Tom Hanks is portraying Rogers in this film, as natural a fit as there’s ever been, particularly in light of the rather amazing coincidence that the two are actually distant relatives. You may not realize, however, that the movie is not actually a bio-pic. In fact, Hanks’s Rogers is a supporting character, rather than the lead.

The movie is actually a semi-fictionalized re-telling of the story behind that original Esquire profile. Real-life writer Tom Junod has been fictionalized into Lloyd Vogel (at Junod’s request, as he notes in another tremendous piece published just this month):

“Well, basically everything in the script that’s about the relationship between you and Fred is very accurate!”

“That’s good!”

“But everything else—the relationship between you and your father and you and your wife—is made up!”

I read a copy of the script over the weekend, with an open mind. On Monday morning, I wrote Micah and Noah back, along with Peter Saraf, the producer at Big Beach, the company that had optioned my Esquire story, and asked them to change my name and the names of my family members. And that’s how I became Lloyd Vogel.

The change does nothing to take away from the movie. It’s a well-written, and fabulously well-directed, film. It’s also very true to the spirit of “Can You Say……Hero?”, and like that piece, it’s well worth your time.

Recently, I spotted a story about T-Mobile successfully forcing a company called Lemonade to change the color of their marketing materials in Germany. T-Mobile was able to do this because they own a trademark on the color magenta. I first learned of the rather ridiculous idea of trademarking a color many years ago, and since that time, I’ve kept a not-at-all comprehensive list of stories about this practice. Today, let’s take a look at just a few colors that companies have attempted to trademark, with varying degrees of success.

 Magenta 

T-Mobile uses magenta widely, and the color is certainly well associated with them in the telecommunications space. However, the aforementioned story involved them suing an online insurance provider. Worse, it seems T-Mobile isn’t even using the color they actually have trademarked, as evidenced by this graphic from the story:

My favorite part about this is that some lawyer got paid to be really snarky, in pink chart form.

 Pullman Brown 

This brown is trademarked by United Parcel Service (UPS). As truly long-time readers will know, this site established nearly a decade ago that brown is a bad color. Frankly, UPS can have it.

 Yellow 

The Wiffle Ball Inc. owns the color yellow when it comes to plastic bats. That’s fair enough, but what’s more than a little ridiculous is that many Wiffle bats state “The color YELLOW is a registered trademark of The Wiffle Ball, Inc.”.

A bit of research indicates several other companies own or have attempted to own “yellow” within their various sectors, from Mr. LongArm (“World’s Leading US Manufacturer of Extension Poles & Accessories”) to Cheerios (General Mills had no luck there). Perhaps this competition is what led Lemonade to use magenta, rather than fighting so many others for the more obvious yellow.

 Purple 

For years, British chocolatier Cadbury held a trademark on the colo(u)r purple. Earlier this year, a serious of legal maneuverings actually led to them losing the registered trademark on that color. For a wealth of reasons, though, it would still be inadvisable to sell chocolate wrapped in purple.

 Green 

Oil and gas megacorporation BP has repeatedly attempted to claim the color green in Australia, suing retailer Woolworths unsuccessfully, after the latter has also used green in its own gas stations. Perhaps BP might instead consider trademarking Gulf-Of-Mexico-oil-spill black?

Closing

Legally, trademarking a color as part of a corporate identity within a specific sector like “shipping” or “backyard baseball” makes some degree sense. Attempting to claim ownership of a color broadly, however, generally just winds up being laughable.

While at a bar for some pub trivia recently, I noticed a large group gathered on the other side of the room. These folks were not present to trade their knowledge of minutia for a handful of dollars. Instead, it appeared as though they were having a baby shower. At a bar.

That idea was disconcerting enough, but their event culminated in something even worse: a gender reveal. If you’re not familiar with this relatively new trend, it’s an event wherein the gender of a baby is revealed, often in a “fun” or “clever” way. To quote Wikipedia’s examples:

Often, it employs the trope of pink (denoting a female) or blue (denoting a male), perhaps hidden inside a cake or piñata. When the cake is cut or the piñata is opened, the color popularly associated with the baby’s sex is revealed.

This particular gathering utilized a large, opaque ballon. When they were ready to unveil what sort of genitals a forthcoming infant would have, the balloon was popped, and guests were showered in blue confetti. The whole thing was more than a little silly, and the venue for it was poorly chosen, but it was just after the pop that they really lost me. You see, when it was finally revealed that the woman was expecting a boy, a large percentage of the guests cheered. They cheered as if for a game-winning touchdown or the playing of a band’s biggest hit, live in concert. They cheered, and I honestly can’t understand the mindset. Were these people rooting specifically for a boy? I doubt it. Surely, they would have cheered for any outcome at all, like complete and utter simpletons.

Gender reveal parties have always been inane, but more recently, they’ve proven themselves to be terribly dangerous. In fact, gender reveal stunts may well be the single most dangerous activity mankind has ever devised. In 2017, a gender reveal explosion caused a 45,000 acre forest fire leading to over $8 million in damages. A recently released NTSB report has indicated that a gender reveal stunt led to a plane crash in September. Just last month, a gender reveal pipe bomb killed a woman. Perhaps it’s time for the government to step in, to safeguard the citizenry from themselves, and their idiot neighbors.

In closing, please allow this post to serve as a warning that if you invite me to your gender reveal party, I will boo the result, regardless of what it is.