Advertising signs with different spellings.

[ben_issacs]

Folks, 

On our layouts there are buildings with advertising signs on them, and such things as vending machines,

These signs are deliberately spelt slightly different to the real signs.

On a red and white drink vending machine, the sign says 'Coa Cola' in the appropriate font. 

I have a Sankei photographic shop which has a sign advertising 'Buji (Fuji) Film' with the green and white background 

A bike shop has 'Hando', (Honda), again in the appropriate colours and font.

Obviously, this is to avoid having to pay royalties to the various companies for the use of the correct signs.

No doubt there are many other examples of these 'altered' signs,  details of ones other than those I've quoted would be of interest.

Regards, 

Bill, 

Melbourne.

 

 

 

[katoftw]

Are you asking for more examples?

[ben_issacs]

katoftw,

Yes, more examples would be welcomed.

Bill, 

Melbourne.

 

[MichiK]

http://paperstructure.jimdo.com has a few ones:

- mamazone

- TFC and (prticularily funny) WcDonalds

- a Revis jeans shop (which once was a freebie, but seems to be gone now)

I suspect [most of] all the other company signs and ads follow the pattern, too, but I just don't know most of them...

[Pashina12]

1 hour ago, MichiK said:

http://paperstructure.jimdo.com has a few ones:

- mamazone

- TFC and (prticularily funny) WcDonalds

- a Revis jeans shop (which once was a freebie, but seems to be gone now)

I suspect [most of] all the other company signs and ads follow the pattern, too, but I just don't know most of them...

 

Well at least the KFC wasn't THC instead of TFC... though that would be rather apropos, that's the only way I'd ever eat at a KFC lol

[ben_issacs]

Folks, 

I wonder if the same thing is done with the signs in Japanese characters?

One would need a good grasp of written Japanese and a knowledge of the various signs to investigate this.

But, as most of us don't read Japanese, it doesn't matter!

Bill, 

Melbourne.

 

[railsquid]

I can't think of any examples off-hand, but I'm sure there must be some.

[bill937ca]

Starcup Coffee on a Tomix 4043.

[Pashina12]

Starcup... I've seen similar things in real-world shops in China

[maihama eki]

The good thing about the Sankei OHDAN motorcycle shop is the big red letters are individual pieces that can be reordered to spell HONDA.  The vertical sign you would have to fix maybe by reprinting it.

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10126408

 

There is an HO scale HAMAYA shop as well - similar situation.

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10201692

 

I know that working out the licensing would be significant effort, but if they could make it happen, I would happily pay a little more for these to be correct.

[cteno4]

While there may be a small licensing cost per use, that’s not the usual problem, it’s doing the deal that’s the issue. The bigger the company the harder it is to do all the paper work, approvals, hoops to jump thru, contracts, sometimes up front “make it worth it to us” initial payments, etc. Some want approval in the final product which can be hard to supply or give time once things are to that point. It gets trickier when you are reusing brands in other ways as they get super concerned it benefits them and does not misrepresent the brand, or be used in other ways once sold by the buyer, etc.

 

I use to deal with a lot of media licensing for educational products and the simplest things could be daunting on the staff time it would take to do the license agreement as it could add up and you gotta add that into the product cost as well. Also the bigger the brand the more they will zap you if they catch you w.o a license or drifting from the agreement at all. It’s even a bit of a cost to track use for royalties and make payment. This use to be a nightmare for some that would not do a buyout but wanted ongoing royalties and we learned not to do ongoing but only a buyout or set number with auto redo for any additional where we just did a second payment if we did a second run.  The few times we got into anything around a brand the legal contracts and hoops went way way up, which also means lawyer costs which were the worst cost spiral. These are the eat you alive costs, especially if you are not a big business and could add a very large cost on not a large margin product.

 

sorry for the diatribe on this it’s just such a hidden expense that I had no idea of all the ways it sucks up money until I had to actually do it and stay on budget to boot!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

Yeah, I have no doubt that the licensing work is nearly impossible for a small company like Sankei.  Honda probably wouldn't even respond to their inquiry for example.  Although, they worked things out with Ghibli very successfully obviously.

The bigger folks like Kato, Tomix, GM, MA, and so forth seem to make it work since we have the Tomix Family Mart and 7-11 stores, various wrapped trains, containers and vehicles with various licensed characters, company logos, brands, etc.  I would assume if you make a 1/150 Toyota car, Toyota had to sign off on that and maybe get an up-front or ongoing payment.

 

I can't imagine the work in that area that will go into making the Disney wrap trains that are coming.

 

[chadbag]

You even see it in the Anime films and stuff.   Obvious McDonalds take-offs in Ranma 1/2 and a billion other examples I've seen.  Obviously very common in Japan to do the imitation "close enough" stuff.

 

 

[cteno4]

depends on the situation. some love active parallel marketing others want total control and really limit it to their plan. ghibli obviously saw the buildings as a perfect tie in and license and a whole product line. Adding honda onto a building is not going to do much for sankei's business, but a line of Ghibli buildings would be big.

 

good thing about doing a model of a real painted train is its sort of an extension of it and i expect the hard work got done doing the prototype license. disney is totally about marketing and licensing (and not all that about creativity anymore), so i expect not that hard but probably expensive. 

 

I cant remember what the thing was with modeling car designs in japan. there was something discussed about it on the forum way back.

 

Licensing is a crap shoot sometimes would surprise me either way of something simple turning out hard or something hard ending up easy!

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

 

[ben_issacs]

Folks

"Ghibli' was the name given to the Italian Caproni Ca 309, a light, twin engined recce-bomber used  by the Regia Aeronautica in Libya during WW 2.

The name is that of a desert wind.

Regards, 

Bill, 

Melbourne.