AIBU to object to this brand name - particularly given the nature of the product?

[badtastename]

Hi all,

I have name-changed for this as I am corresponding with companies and don't want them to identify me but I'm regular reader and occasional poster.

I think this brand has been around for a while, but I have just noticed it for the first time and it made me do a double take.

It is a shaving brand for men making, amongst other things, open blade/ cut throat razors... called (very questionably IMHO) 'Bluebeard's Revenge' Yes, he of the serial wife murdering fairytale fame (the character isn't a priate even though they may think he is/ try to pass him off as such - their labels carry a skull and crossbones - Blackbeard was a pirate).

I mean, what?! Razors named after not just a serial wife murderer, but after his revenge? I just don't like it at all and my husband doesn't either.

The story gave me chills as a child reading it in Grimm's fairytales and I just don't know what I would think if I saw a razor with that name on it in someone's bathroom - it is a strange character to identify with I think and more than a little questionable if you think about it for more than a second.

Knowing that domestic abuse is still sadly an issue for so many men and women, with often very violent and sad outcomes, I just can't find this brand name funny or acceptable.

So, AIBU in hating this name and wanting this brand to change it to something less offensive?

[PaulAnkaTheDog]

Oh for fucks sake! Yes yabu!

[peppercold]

Is there anything people don't get offended by?? Jesus I must be shallow.

[Moreisnnogedag]

Meh. Not bothered really.

[badtastename]

But of all the things to call it - why after that character? Why on earth would you choose that association? Bluebeard is known for nothing else other than murdering his wives...

[ThatStewie]

It bothers me

[SouthWesterlyWinds]

YABU - Bluebeard strangled his wives. Nowt to to with razor blades.

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

I wonder if they meant Blackbeard and lazily got the wrong anti-hero all the way through to market?

[NeedACleverNN]

Hah I love that name!

I want to buy some

Yes yabu! He wasn't even a real person

[BranTriLlygaid]

Gosh, I wish I had the time and energy in life to be bothered by such trivial things. Are you also bothered by Wonka chocolate bars, considering the fictional man did some pretty messed up things to naughty children? Yabu, by the way.

[badtastename]

apparently the products are for 'Real Men' and they wonder if their customers are 'Man Enough' to use them

[BranTriLlygaid]

Oh no! It's just for men, and there was me looking for a nice new wife-strangling razor to sort out my manly woman-beard with. Sad face . It's just like that time I couldn't eat Yorkie bars anymore (I did in secret, until I had an urge to man a barbecue and do half arsed DIY, dangerous stuff!).

[MitzyLeFrouf]

I've checked my outrage reserves and I'm afraid there's none available for this.

[cariadlet]

I'd never heard of this brand before. YNBU - it's a horrible brand name. I wonder what on earth was going through the mind of whatever idiot came up with that name.

[NeedACleverNN]

That is brilliant derek

All soaps should do that

[badtastename]

I expected these comments from some familiar posters - I'd be interested to hear from others and am sure there'll be many yet to comment who dislike it as I do.

Maybe you have to have known violence from a man (or woman) or known it happen to people close to you, to realise the significance or give a shit - or just have open eyes and some empathy.

Yes, Miscellaneous - I wondered if there had been a mix up too. I'd hope so.

[Bringmewineandcake]

Am loving some of the replies on here
Sorry OP, doesn't bother me in the slightest.

[WorraLiberty]

I completely understand why you name changed to post about this outrageous product.

[steppemum]

I cannot get upset about this. I don;t even really make any connection. To me it sounds like a bad pirate, I take it at face value.

Really really not worth time and energy on.

[badtastename]

EatShitDerek why on earth would you want to see a cut throat razor that identifies with male violence against women?

[TheCladdagh]

The thing that strikes me is that this product was arrived at by a culturally illiterate branding team.

Bluebeard is a French folk tale about a serial wife killer who is finally killed by the brothers of his last wife (or in Angela Carter's cool re-version, by her badass mother arriving on horseback). He doesn't get any 'revenge', unless we're supposed to see him murdering several wives and hiding their bloody corpses in a locked room in his house as revenge for some insult to his masculinity. The story never gives us a motive, only that he keeps forbidding the latest wife to go into a locked room where, surprise, the bodies of her predecessors are stashed.

But the image on the Bluebeard products is a skull and crossbones, suggesting the Jolly Roger or a poison warning. Did the branding people confuse Bluebeard with Blackbeard the 18thc English pirate? Or with Sweeney Todd, who would at least fit the 'revenge' bit, but surely no one wants to market a shaving balm that references a fictional killer barber???

And their grammar seems to partake of the general mess. No apostrophe.