The Comedy of International Branding

I was going to try to fit these amazing snipnets of international packaging into the sidebars, but because of their exceptional fabulousness, they really deserve their own post.
For Instance:

Kyrgyzstan competes with China in crimes of copyright infringement, but on a much, much smaller scale. Where China will blatantly rip off and produce millions of an existing product, Kyrgyzstan will take popular brands, advertisements, logos or celebrity faces photocopied from magazines and paste them onto singular, local shop signs or onto items sold in small quantities in the markets. Here in Osh, they took the iconic Mr. Clean and creatively turned him into... Mr. Proper!

But I think it might be wise to forgo the lawsuits against the copying Kyrgyz because when left to their own advertising imagination they come up with things like this: a laundry detergent called, well....Barf.
Photo courtesy of Rachel Imms


This is what a typical grocery shop looks like in Central Asia, whereby the Vodka section takes up more than half the store. Here, the bargain basement Vodka bin is selling bottles for 35 som, approximately $1.25.
The brands of vodka can get pretty interesting as well. It took us a minute to figure out if this was a drunk and possessed looking Barbie want-to-be on the top of this bottle, but soon we realized it was none other than Miss Yulia Tymoshenko, the un-mistakenly braided, orange party revolutionary and prime minister-ess of Ukraine.
Photos courtesy of the lovely Rachel Imms.

In the same shop, we found Liv Tyler endorsing a local Kyrgyz, cardboard boxed wine, making me realize just how much money celebrities can pull in from international advertising. While next to her, appealing to all those closet Muslim drinkers, we have a women in Hijab trying to sell this fine merlot.

Why only have Red Bull when you can also have Red Camel?
The intrepid Mr. Justin Chelvam took this photo and I am not sure where since I ripped it off his Facebook page for all to see.

The Uyghur's of Northwestern China couldn't afford any celebrity endorsements and ddin't want the trouble of potential copyright infringement lawsuits, so they created a cola that appealed directly to their customer base....Cola Uyghur. I think you are allowed to drink it even if you are not Uyghur...I think.

A market in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan has successfully moved through the mercury and dolphin issues of tuna by offering it's customers cow and horse meat in a can....Mr. Ed never tasted so goooood!