The Arnold Palmer is a non-alcoholic beverage that combines iced tea and lemonade. The name refers to the professional American golfer Arnold Palmer, who was known to often request and drink this beverage combination; some attribute the invention of the beverage to the golfer.
I try not to be swayed by consumerism bullshit but Liquid Death got me when they changed the name to Dead Billionaire after Arizona threatened to sue over the name "Armless Palmer".
I didn't know that. Haha.
December 18, 2023
Liquid Death, a Santa Monica-based canned-water brand experiencing substantial retail growth, recently changed the name of one of its latest products from "Armless Palmer" to "Dead Billionaire" after the estate of late golfer Arnold Palmer, who is credited with inventing the tea-and-lemonade drink, threatened legal action.
In an Instagram post to its 2.6 million followers in late November, the company announced the rebrand of this beverage it launched earlier this year.
Now it has a way cooler name that won't require us to fight a senseless legal battle with a large enterprise who sent us a letter saying we can't use the word 'Palmer'.
I originally read it was the Palmer estate but the wikipedia page said it was Arizona co. I think if it is the estate that's just all around funnier though. But also the beverage legit tastes good. It's a lot cleaner tasting than some of the other canned versions full of corn syrup that I've tried. I tend to go for it when I don't wanna get an energy drink when I wanna treat myself to slop instead of water or coffee.
I might just be a target for big fuck you marketing like this though lol.
The very first time I heard there was a drink company called Liquid Death - I was 95+% certain it was a bit but I googled anyway and I got a surprise. I still don't know anything about them because I avoid a lot of pop culture stuff and I refuse to watch any ads at all*. I had a super-quickie look at their Wikipedia page.
Promotions
In May 2020, the company released Greatest Hates, an album of death metal music created with lyrics from hate comments the company received online; a second album of hate comments, described as "punk rock", was released in November. In February 2022, during Super Bowl LVI, the company released an advertisement featuring children enjoying the beverage with Judas Priest's song "Breaking the Law".
Parodying advertisements for alcoholic beverages, the advertisement ends with the tagline "Don't be scared, it's just water".
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Ninja edit
*Definitely not true. I do sometimes watch ads just to check them out but just silly stuff. Never anything trying too hard to be uber-Americans like Super Bowl ads. I'll never understand the fascination. "Do you wanna see what they showed on the Super Bow?!?!" No. I like horror movies but eldritch self-referential fetish pop culture consumerism love and patriotism is beyond what I can take.I've heard someone say because of their can art, they can take a few to a party and look like they are a cool beer drinker and not get bugged. Idk how true that is but it sounds plausible. I've only ever tried the Dead Billionaire and can't really vouch for their other stuff. $3 for a can of sparkling water really doesn't make sense to me.
Also I feel you on advertising. I try my darnedest but you really can't avoid it. Something about Budweiser a few years back spending $20 million for a Super Bowl commercial to advertise how they donated a few hundred thousand to some relief effort kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But also ads don't really work on me much anyway. It actually has a better chance of getting me to hate your product lol.
I try my darnedest but you really can't avoid it.
I can but only because I only very rarely use the internet on mobile. But the other day I had to deal with a chess.com issue so I disabled Ublock to try to figure out the problem. Within seconds an ad started talking at me. I almost started laughing at the idea. How can that possibly work on somebody on a chess site? Then again - maybe I'm wrong and it does work. I don't understand people at all - Americans in particular.
The man was a drink mogul, but the crooked media will only ever remember him for his golf hobby
