What’s in a Name? Potato.

Farewell, Mr. Potato Head. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. They’re changing the name of the product to Potato Head, so it will be in a box that has Potato Head in really big letters, but there will still be a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head as actual characters, so I kind of can’t see the point, it’s like Prince using a symbol for a name with no clue to pronunciation just to fuck with people’s heads.
It’s Hasbro’s choice, of course, and they weren’t even under any pressure to do this, so I suppose it’s to their credit. You could say they are being proactive, or that they are just keeping with the current trend. However, it has stirred some controversy, because damn near anything does any more, we are all secure in our positions and firing outward, and the marketplace of ideas has been transformed into a battleground of ideas by the internet. So, all the pronoun people are praising the decision and all the rednecks think this is PC gone wild.
(I don’t actually know which side this is going to support, but I’d just like to point out that neither Mr. or Mrs. Potato Head is anatomically correct or endowed with genitalia of any kind)
Anyway, I kind of find myself siding with the rednecks on this one, and that does not happen often. Mr. Potato Head has always been Mr. Potato Head and should continue to be, just like Mr. Clean (or, as the Brits call him, Mr. Proper) should not just be Clean (or Proper), Mr. Brown’s Iced Coffee should not just be Brown’s Iced Coffee, which doesn’t have anywhere near the pizzazz, and poor old Mr. Bean should not just be Bean.
But, whatever. It’s still a great toy.