The Gold Dust Twins furnish an excellent illustra tion of flexibility, in the use of a trade-mark. The twins are taken off theyackage label and used to illus vividly the slo gan, "Let the Gold Dust Twins do your work." The trade-mark of Armour and Com pany, page 277, per mits a series of prod ucts—Armour's Yeri best Bacon, Ham, CI 1 o matoes, and other foods to be featured under similar marks. Their advertisement features the trade-mark oval label and explains that their mark on any product is a guarantee of quality.
Another application of the same idea is the Na tional Biscuit 'Company's "Iner Seal" mark. The difference between the use of these two trade-marks is that the "iner seal" mark re mains the same on all pack ages, while the Armour mark retains only its general form and is applied to different products.
Allegorical figures are losing the strong appeal they once had. A figure Mars as a trade-mark lacks appeal to the ordinary purchaser of revolvers, while, on the other hand, the representation of "hammering the hammer" appeals in a quite forcible manner to every buyer of a revolver.
6. Appropriate trade-marks. — A trade-mark which suggests some feature of the goods that it iden tifies is likely to be more forceful and consequently to have greater selling value than any arbitrarily chosen device. It may be simply descriptive as "Swans Down" cake flour, the winged foot of the Goodyear Company for tires, "Rub-dry" towels, "Come-Packt" furniture, "Slidewell" collars, "Simon Pure" leaf lard, "Hole-Proof" hosiery and others.
The spinning wheel, the triale-mark of James McCutcheon's linens, is an illustration of appropriateness in marks.
The name "Prophylactic" means "tending to prevent disease" and goes well with the slogan "a clean tooth never decays." "Kiddie-Koop" is relevant in its sug gestion of making the "kiddie" safe in his crib. "Wear-Ever" suggests durability and serviceableness in aluminum kitchen utensils.
7. Trade-marking perishable eatables.—One of the latest tendencies in advertising is to put a trade-mark upon perishable eatables, especially fruits.
One of the most fitting trade-marks of this sort is the term "Sunkist" for oranges. As used in the ad vertising pages of magazines the color of the orange with the suggestion that it is "sun-kissed," ripened by the sun, is most appealing. The appetite needs little
further stimulus to want a Sunkist orange.
The trade-mark "Seatag" for oysters is excellent. There is a suggestion of freshness in the word sea, and the suggestion of being tagged in the sea, tagged while at the height of freshness, is stimulating to the appetite.
8. Trade-mark as a reminder.—The value of the trade-mark as a reminder is particularly high in those fields where competitive products—all approaching the same degree of quality—are numerous. Sup pose a city man finds that he has use for a saw. He makes a note to call at a hardware store to buy a saw. So far, he is concerned only with his need for any good saw at a fair price. Before calling at the store, he re members that, ten years before, his father had several saws which gave good service. He has a hazy recol lection that those saws were marked with a keystone of some sort. .
When he gets to the store he looks over a number of saws. One of them bears the "Keystone Mark." Then the customer remembers that that good saw of his father's was a Disston. So he buys a Disston; the trade-mark, acting as a reminder, makes the selec tion for him.
9. Preventing substitution..—The manufacturers of Lea & Perrins Sauce are constantly called upon to prevent the use of substitutes, which are offered for consumption in a Lea & Perrins bottle bearing the genuine label. The restaurant keeper buys a num ber of bottles of the genuine sauce, carefully preserves the labels intact on the bottles and refills them with a cheap mixture. This involves considerable labor, affords but little extra profit and may drive away trade, but it is often done, and shows to what lengths substitution will be carried. The non-refillable bot tle and the pasting of a genuine label over the cork are precautions against this kind of substitution.
If a purveyor will go to such extreme measures to substitute, what chance has a firm to build up a repu tation on a product which is not protected by a trade mark? While some lines of trade-marked goods are, from the nature of their use, subject to piracy even when trade-marked, ordinarily a distinctive trade mark insures reasonable protection against substitu tion.