Cif or Jif

PeteEd wrote: »

Barry Scott laughs in its face whatever way it's spelt

Barry Scott never laughs, shouting is his only means of communication.... he's probably angry because he has cif-ilis.

Only junts call it 'Cif'.

There's an American brand of peanut butter called Jif. I wonder if that had anything to do with the name change.

Candie wrote: »

TIL that Olay was once Ulay. Huh.

And it was Youlay, not Oolay. Important to know.

LETHAL LADY wrote: »

When they changed Smith's Cream to Soothing Cream I could just about handle it. Then the bastards changed it to Sudocrem �� Like speaking in tongues so it was!

Far be it from me to ask a LETHAL LADY her age, but it's been called Sudocrem since 1950.

The history of it actually involves Ireland.

Cif is a French product made by a company that Unilever merged into itself (they’re the Borg of washing powder). It was always called Cif from day one.

Anyway, it launched in the UK as Vim originally but Unilever Ireland called it Jif, as it was deemed more like a word and someone else owned Vim here at the time.

There was an issue with Jif squeezy lemon in the UK, which is a much older product than Jif/Cif.

Anyway, Unilever also bought that and ever since Jif cleanser became Cif in the UK and Ireland.

It’s still called Jif in Scandinavia, Australia and it’s called Viss in Germany and for some reason Handy Andy in South Africa.

Loads of these products exist though in Unilever and P&G.

For example Omo is Unilever’s top end laundry brand but in Ireland and Britain they own the Persil brand (which is Henkel owned almost everywhere else) and call it that, in France it’s known as Skip and so on. The logo is identical and marketing campaigns are shared.

Same goes for products like Fairy liquid (P&G) which is known as Dawn in the US, Dreft in France and has several other names.

The best of the lot is probably “Heart Brand” which is the Unilever international ice cream brand. There are umpteen names for this including HB, Walls, Miko ans so on but it’s identical heart brand packaging and products in every market.

Post Brexit I would suspect Ireland will see a lot more continental supply chain items so, you might be seeing Skip or Omo replacing Persil branding and so on.

An elderly relative of mine refers to Eir Mobile as “P&T Mobile” and she gets her “piped television” from RTE relays apparently and refuses to listen to any of the new fangled names Liberty Global has stuck on the cable company. She seems to find Virgin Media a bit of an over dose of Richard Branson, so “the piped telly” it is!

She also still refers to Tesco as H. Williams! Skipping over even Quinsworth.

She also was asking what the hell they renamed Marathon as something that just reminds her of knickers. She had to give up eating them as apparently it just put her off lol.