Comet, the Clean Rice
Mar 14th, 2006 by Alex
When you think of Comet, you probably think of the household cleaner. While perusing the weekly circulars, I discovered that there’s also a brand of rice that shares the same name.
Comet, the powdery disinfectant cleanser with bleach. The same stuff that’s under the sink in millions of homes, used by lifeguards to scour poolside tiles, used by everyone to scrub their sinks, tubs, showers, and toilets. Bearing an eerie resemblance to other white powders, this stuff has been around since I can remember.
Coment, the Rice Lover’s Rice. According to the company’s web site, they’re supposedly a brand leader in the southern parts of the country. I for one hadn’t heard of it until yesterday, being a relative northeasterner. Up here, we’re in Uncle Ben’s and Rice-A-Roni territory. Ironic that a San Francisco-branded rice is big out here in Maryland, yet no one has heard of the Texas-based Comet Rice.
One is a product of Prestige Brands, Inc., the other American Rice, Inc. (ARI). Both products are intended for completely seperate purposes; one is a food product and the other is a bleach-based cleaning product. These items should be kept in completely seperate aisles of the grocery store (and indeed they are), yet they have the same name. This bothers and concerns me, because there’s a lot of stupid people out there today; I’m suprised that we haven’t heard about some absent-minded parent feeding Coment cleaner to their child. You’ll never hear about the absent-minded people attempting to scour their tubs with cooked rice, they’d be too embarrassed.
Coment Rice has been around since 1902. I’d say “leave it to Texans to produce a food product with the same name as a bleach-based cleaner,” but I wasn’t able to find when the powdery stuff was introduced. A cheap shot, perhaps… but still a valid question. Don’t companies check out their prospective product names before they release and market them?
There ought to be some sort of watchdog organization that makes sure that product names don’t overlap, especially if they could cause grave danger if swapped. Not that we need yet another government organization or special interest group, there being a million of them already. You would think it’d be a trademark issue, but it isn’t. According to the United Status Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO):
“Trademarks include any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods.”
I’d like to believe that all consumers could distinguish the two, but that’s wishful thinking.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.moundalexis.com/images/delicious.png){kind=small}