Search: starbucks mermaid two tails
Why: I was looking at this clock on Etsy. You can see that early versions of the Starbucks logo were downright lewd. You can only see her fins today.
Answer: Because it's not a mermaid; it's a melusine! But first: the company is named after Starbuck, Captain Ahab's first mate in Moby Dick. In keeping with this theme, CEO Howard Shultz wrote:
Terry [Heckler] also poured over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren... That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself.Here is the hiccup: a Siren is half-woman, half-bird. A mermaid, of course, is half-woman, half-fish. In Greek mythology, both creatures seduce men and drown them. In fact, some languages use the same word for both bird and fish creatures, such as the Maltese word sirena.
But that's neither here nor there.
Voilà! In European folklore, she is a woman up top and a fish or serpent from the waist down. Sometimes she has wings or two tails. She barely ever wears a shirt.The whole sex-symbol status of mermaids hinges on the question which part is "woman" - upper or lower. "The other type of mermaid" that hapless Fry was referring to would have problems attracting suitors, of course. And how do you do it with the normal type?
Wise mythologists came up with the answer, of course. And the answer is a two-tailed mermaid sometimes called a Melusine.
So Starbucks had that chick on its earliest logo:
Then this, this, and this. She even has a belly button in the middle one.
And now a coffee bag has another stylized "siren" mermaid melusine on it, but I'm not posting it because I don't even like coffee. You can look at it here. It's also on the clock up there.
Source: DeadProgrammer's Cafe, Brand Autopsy
The More You Know: Though Dead Programmer posted that like 5 years ago, NENA left him this comment a month ago. Do you agree or disagree?
1 month ago
Actually, in european mythology, the Melusine is a woman who promissed great fortune to a knight who married her, as long as he never looks at her naked. So the knight married her and was unbelievingly wealthy and of had a high repuation and many beautiful children with Melusine (dont ask me how if he couldnt see her naked..). But then he returned one day after a hunt and Melusine was still bathing and the knight had the urge to see his wife naked to e steped into the bath. That very second Melusine turned into her Mermaidlike form and disappeared, and with her all the knight wealth and reputation, and Melusine only returned to see her children every few weeks, but no one but her children ever saw her again.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's interesting! Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeletethe reason starbucks changed its logo:
ReplyDeleteStarbucks 'Mermaid' Upsets Christian Group
Q13FOX Online,
Thursday, May 15, 2008
SEATTLE — The Starbucks 'mermaid' logo is causing an uproar with some Christian groups.
The groups say the 'mermaid' seen on Starbucks cups is 'slutty.' The logo shows the 'mermaid' or 'siren' spreading its tails and showing bare breasts.
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/may2008/150508Starbucks.htm
Dear Starbucks, your logo makes me cringe!
ReplyDeleteMermaids have been written about and drawn since man began sailing the seas... Different cultures from all over the world, with no way of communicating with each other, all describing the same aquatic hominid. The oldest drawing goes back to Egyptian times! I'd say they're real, and likely evolved from a group of aquatic apes that broke off from their land relatives and instead, went further in to the water. Over millions of years, this group of hominids would have evolved more marine-like features to survive in their environment. Therefore, I see several anatomically incorrect things with the Starbucks "mermaid"...
First of all, marine mammals that once walked on land (like whales and dolphins once did) would have lost ALL their hair, because this causes drag in water... and that includes the hair on their head! Secondly, hominids from the Neogene Period had a skull crest... Land apes eventually lost this but an aquatic ape would have likely retained this feature. Their skull orbits and eyes themselves would become larger because under water is low light. Their legs, over millions of years, would have become two, then ONE tail fluke for increased speed under water. Also, marine mammals are smooth... NO scales (like the ones drawn on the Starbucks mermaid)! Yes, they would have retained their arms and hands for hunting, but there would be increased webbing between their fingers (as there is with polar bears) for swimming.
Yes, I know a thing or two about animals and evolution because I'm a zoo/wildlife vet!