My son is a marketing genius

Telling an old story here, but I've got a lot of old ground to cover, so, remember when we (Elizabeth, Andrew and I) went camping with my parents in their RV?  We had a lot of fun, and Andrew coined a new term that lives on in the family.

I brought a long a bunch of stuff they like, including some food and drinks.  One morning, I started to get Andrew some orange juice.  Now, since he was quite small he's never really liked cow's milk, strongly preferring OJ in the morning, so (pediatrician-approved) we buy the calcium-fortified OJ and don't worry about milk (too much).  And as you all know, I come from a long line of bargain shoppers, though I do have quality standards.  Bottom line, I buy whatever name brand OJ is on sale, and don't pay much attention to it.

And so I pulled out the OJ I brought along:

Which resulted in screeches from Andrew.  No, I don't want that juice, I want straw juice!

Hmm.  Straw juice.  What the heck?  So, like any mommy, I tried to find out what was making my 2.5 year old screech.  What do you mean straw juice?  What is straw juice?

Which just made him screech louder.

So, in the midst of the screeching, I started wondering, maybe he had seen me pack the cooler.  I had put in two small, frozen juice boxes, and those juice boxes were tucked away into the RV's freezer.  Maybe he wanted a juice box?  But it was breakfast time and I was not going to give him a frozen juice box, because a) it was frozen and b) we don't drink juice boxes at breakfast.  But, the juice boxes were in the freezer, and he wasn't around when I packed and unpacked the cooler, so why does he want a juice box?  And why is he calling a juice box straw juice, though they do all come with those little plastic straws that peel off and get lost everyplace and...well, let's jut say the screeching continued as I pondered all this.

So, I tried reasoning with the 2.5 year old toddler.  Andrew.  We don't have straw juice.  We have orange juice.  Let me pour you your orange juice and let's all just calm down.

I'm sure you can imagine how well that worked.  And remember there are 5 people in a 30 foot RV while a 2.5 year old is screeching about straw juice.

Exasperated, I flung open the RV's fridge door and said, Andrew. Look. There is no straw juice!

Whereupon he launched himself across the RV and with a shout of glee, grabbed:

 Oh.  Tropicana.  With the logo of an orange with a straw.  Straw juice.  OK, gotcha.

And since that time, we only buy straw juice.

Which would be the end of the story, but I needed a pic of Tropicana, and a little googling led me to discover that my 2.5 year old has more marketing sense than the execs who run the Pepsi-Cola Corporation.  You see, in 2008, Tropicana (a subsidiary of Pepsi) went through an entire re-branding effort, which resulted in complete redesign, at what must have been enormous cost, of their entire product line.  Straw in orange out, bland expanse of orange juice in wine goblet in.  The redesign was such a failure and resulted in so many complaints, that in 2009, they went back to the tried and true.

Orange in straw.  Straw juice.  So simple even a 2.5 year old understands the power of a brand.  Stick with what works.