Fukuppy, Fukushima Industries new mascot, is branding disaster
Company left with egg on their face after naming their new mascot 'Fukuppy'
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Your support makes all the difference.As sending positive brand signals go, naming your mascot Fukuppy is probably a step in the wrong direction.
Indeed, it would seem this refrigerator company have had their very own fukuppy with the unfortunate christening of this cartoon egg.
Social media users seized on the winged ovum's name to ridicule Fukushima Industries' mascot, with initial reports linking the upbeat ovum with Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Fukushima plant suffered a nuclear meltdown in 2011, forcing the evacuation of 300,000 people, and there are still reports of leaks and contamination.
However this innocent egg is actually attached to Fukushima Industries, a company who make refrigerators, based hundreds of miles away in Osaka.
Despite correcting the reports, the company is considering renaming their winged egg after being linked not only with the Western shorthand for a horrible error but also with the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
“A lot of media are reporting [on] our mascot, which created misunderstanding,” a company spokeswoman told Agence France-Presse. “In order to get rid of the confusion, we will announce our stance on the issue on our website later in the day.”
The refrigerator company has now removed Fukuppy’s Western name from the release. The correct pronunciation of the egg's name is actually Foo koo pee.
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