Most actors aspire to have the word "versatile" appear in their epitaphs. Thus their fear of being "typecast," even though the latter term is a supreme compliment in many ways: It says, "You played the role of X so well that I can't believe you could possibly be Y or Z, too."
In this sense, products aren't so dissimilar to actors. It would a nice tribute to a product for it to become so intimately associated with fulfilling such and such a function that we end up not being able to dissociate it from said function. The pitfall here, though, is that such a strong association will blind us to its other virtues.
That's a potentially serious pitfall with a product such as a lawn mower. Consumers demand multiple virtues from their lawn mowers, including some combination of the following:
- Power
- Ease of start-up
- Convenience
- Affordability
Toss factors such as how clean a lawn mower is to work with and/or how "green" it is, and you can see just how versatile a lawn mower has to be to win broad approval.
So would a name like "Eco Mower" threaten to typecast a lawn mower excessively? It would be a shame if that were to be the case with the Lehr Eco Mower. Read my review to find out why this versatile lawn mower doesn't deserve to be typecast as merely "green."
Read review: Lehr Eco Mower
Comments
ECO MOWER is a registered trademark of Andrew Humphrey:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/tarr?regser=registration&entry=3705888&action=Request+Status.
But the Lehr lawn mower in question is spelled with 2 words: “Eco Mower.” Your product, according to both the page you’ve linked to and your own website, is spelled with one word: “ecomower.” Does that make a difference, legally? Not being a lawyer, I don’t know. What I do know is that the lawn mower reviewed in this piece is called, for better or worse, the “Lehr Eco Mower.” Not much I can do about that, sorry. You’ll have to take this issue up with Lehr.