Don't name your brand for nuking someone's home
Don't name your brand for nuking someone's home
Plus: The swillitary-industrial complex marches on!
“Booze brand does outrageous thing for press coverage” is not usually newsworthy. Today, I’m making an exception, because a mid-market beverage-alcohol player just released a canned cocktail brand that elides decades of human suffering with Endless Summer-meets-nuclear winter kitsch, and that calls for a closer look.
Introduced by Atomic Brands (which also owns Monaco Cocktails, a popular-in-gas stations line of single-serve mixed drinks) earlier this month, this spirits-based canned cocktail line is “[i]nspired by the historical events at Bikini Island in the [sic] 1940's and 50's that led the world into the atomic and nuclear era,” according to a press release. “Party like it’s the end of the world!” the brand’s slogan urges.
It’s corny stuff, trying to profit off the aesthetics of America’s nascent rise to nuclear superpower without grappling with the material destruction underneath. It doesn’t even seem like Atomic has the energy to pretend there’s any more to it, either. Bikini Island’s official Instagram handle has zero photos and 11 followers, and Fingers is one of them. Initially, that led me to believe this was just a belated April Fool’s joke. However, Carolina Calandriello, Atomic Brands’ marketing & innovation director, confirmed to Fingers via email last week that it was “a legit product launch!”
Folks from the Marshall Islands (of which Bikini Island and Bikini Atoll are a part) are less enthusiastic.