Tag: Brand Names

Minwax

LANE: Okay, I just crunched the numbers and at two thousand words and twenty-five cents a word, this stupid ad’s gonna cost five hundred dollars! That’s five months worth of Minwaxing end tables at my mom’s store.

Minwax is a company founded in Brooklyn in 1904 by Arthur B. Harrison. It’s currently headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. They make Minwax Wood Finish Stain, so Lane is staining end tables (small tables designed to sit next to an armchair or sofa).

This solves the mystery of where Lane gets the money to buy music and other paraphernalia – she gets paid $100 a month (around $25 per week) for staining furniture at the antiques store. It’s not a lot of money, but Lane is thrifty.

Lane refers to it as her “mom’s store”, even though she has a father as well (or she did at the start of the show, anyway). I don’t know if Mrs Kim is the actual sole owner of the store, or if Lane refers to it that way because she sees her mother as the “boss” of the store, being there all the time while her father is mysteriously absent.

By the way, if the antiques at Kim’s Antiques are genuine, staining them would destroy all their value, as they would no longer be authentic. This seems to further call into question the Kim’s dubious business practices as antique dealers.

OshKosh Cords

LORELAI: You had these little OshKosh cords and they were way too big and once at the mall, they fell right down to your knees and I said, “Whoa, there, Droopy Drawers!”.

OshKosh B’gosh, children clothing company founded in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It began in 1895 as the Grove Manufacturing Company by Frank E. Grove, J. Howard Jenkins, and James Clark. Grove was soon bought out and it was renamed Oshkosh Clothing and Manufacturing Company the next year. The B’gosh began being used in 1911, after the manager heard the tagline “Oshkosh b’gosh” in a vaudeville show; it formally became OshKosh B’gosh in 1937.

OshKosh are particularly known for their children’s bibbed overalls, sold since the early twentieth century as a way for parents to dress children like their fathers. They became popular in the 1960s, and since 1984, most of the company’s clothing line is for children. OshKosh have over 300 stores in the US, and are headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s now owned by Carter’s.

Baby Rory would have been wearing corduroy bibbed overalls from OshKosh [pictured].

Elizabeth Arden

PARIS: All right, I’ll push it through … But the next genius who comes up with the brilliant plan to put Elizabeth Arden in the chemistry class can bite my ass.

Elizabeth Arden Inc., major cosmetics, skin care, and fragrance company founded by Canadian-American businesswoman Elizabeth Arden in 1910, first as the Red Door salon on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The brand has been owned by Revlon since 2016 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.

I’m not sure why students would ask for Elizabeth Arden in the chemistry class – maybe for the hand cream? Or for perfume, to cover the chemical smell?

“I’ll have to call Paul Newman”

EMILY: How is your Caesar salad dressing prepared?

LUKE: I’ll have to call Paul Newman and ask him.

Luke is saying he doesn’t make his own salad dressing, he is using a bottle of Newman’s Own dressing, a brand of condiments and foods founded by Hollywood star Paul Newman and author A.E. Hotchner in 1982. The company, headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, donates 100% of its after-tax profits to the Newman’s Own Foundation, a private non-profit foundation which supports various charitable causes – one of them is the SeriousFun Children’s Network, residential summer camps for seriously ill children all over the world, which Newman co-founded in 1988.

Hanes

LORELAI: When I was in school, Linda Lee was class treasurer and she could not keep her knees closed if they were magnetized. Hanes should’ve given her an endorsement deal.

Hanes is a clothing company founded in 1900 by John Wesley Hanes in Winston, North Carolina, which became known as Hanes Hosiery Mills in 1914, merging with P.H. Hanes Knitting Company (founded by John’s brother Pleasant Hanes) in 1965. In 1978, it was bought by Consolidated Foods (Sara Lee). Although Hanes sell a variety of men’s and women’s clothing, it is perhaps best known for its pantyhose.

TheraFlu

LORELAI: I mean, I’d like to have a good illness, something different, impressive. Just once I’d like to be able to say, “Yeah, I’m not feeling so good, my leg is haunted.”

RORY: See, there’s a reason why you only take one packet of TheraFlu at a time.

TheraFlu is a cold and flu treatment consisting of flavoured packets of powder that you make into a hot drink – it’s basically pain relief, decongestants, antihistamines and so on all at once. There are several different types, and the ones for night time make you sleepy. Rory is suggesting that Lorelai put more than one packet into her cup at once, giving her extra doses of everything. It’s believable based on Lorelai’s past behaviour taking over the counter medications.

Lorelai’s wish for a more exotic illness, such as a “haunted leg” is where the episode’s title comes from.

“I was having way too much fun”

DEAN: Yeah, I’m back – and I’m glad to find you not blonde.

RORY: Yeah, I was just having way too much fun, so . . .

Rory refers to the Clairol hair lightener advertising slogan, “Is it true …blondes have more fun?”. It was written by advertising director Shirley Polykoff – a blonde – in 1956, and was considered rather risque at the time.

Rory bleakly jokes that she didn’t dye her hair blonde, because she was already having too much fun (of course she’s actually having a terrible time). Ironically, it is Jess’ girlfriend who is the blonde, and having a lot more fun than Rory.

With his usual ability to turn up unannounced wherever Rory happens to be, Dean has returned home from Chicago three hours early. Although this would have put a serious dent in her plans to be with Jess at the festival, she may be more glad to see him than not, considering that Jess is with someone else, and she’s just had a huge fight with her mother.

Note that even while hugging Dean, Rory is looking over his shoulder at Jess, her face hurt and angry.

Ralph Lauren

SOOKIE: It’s an antique stuffed and mounted trout, and I think it’s manly … It is! It’s very Ralph Lauren.

Ralph Lauren, fashion brand founded in 1967 by designer Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifshitz in 1939). The company has headquarters in New York City, and makes products from the mid-range to the luxury, originally selling men’s fashions. The label’s logo is a man playing polo, and their first full line of menswear was named Polo in 1968.

Q-Tips

LORELAI: Oh, hey, we need Q-Tips.

Q-Tips are a brand of what are known in the US as cotton swabs, and elsewhere as cotton buds, often used for make-up application and cleaning ears.

The first mass-produced cotton swab was developed in 1923 by Polish-American inventor Leo Gerstenzang, after watching his wife attach wads of cotton to a toothpick to clean their baby’s ears. The product was originally known as Baby Gays, then changed to Q-Tip Baby Gays, with the Q standing for “quality”, then just Q-Tips. In North America, the brand name is often used generically for any cotton swab (see Kleenex).