Your coffee is wearing a throwback uniform

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Pax Arcana

If you’ve ordered a coffee from Starbucks in the past few days, you may have noticed that the chain is now using the more old-fashioned brown logo with a twin-tailed mermaid on its cups rather than the more familiar modernized green mermaid. The older logo is similar to the one first used by the coffee retailer in 1971.

On the left, the new old logo. On the right, the new new logo.

Business Week says the company is dressing its overpriced products in the throwback uniform to harken back to simpler times — when people weren’t vandalizing the shit out of the company’s stores and complaining about its unfair buying practices:

This is the second time in three years Starbucks has trotted out the brown mermaid, inspired by a Norse woodcut. Back in 2006, she was resurrected to mark the chain’s 35th anniversary. This time, she is a messenger for Chairman Howard Schultz, who is trying to restore some of the goodwill and warm feelings for the brand that have gone by the wayside because of increasing coffee prices, machine-made lattes, and bad press.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about boobies.

Specifically, let’s talk about how the last time Starbucks trotted out the old logo, the American Civil Defense League for Refraining from Acknowledging the Existence of Mammaries (ACDLRAEM) came out against the bare-breasted siren:

In 2006, when the logo was originally revived, the chain received complaints about the “decency” of the logo and, despite the chairman’s well-known liberal politics, the lady grew long hair to cover her indecency. That’s the version we have today.

And we’re better off for it. Nothing gets Pax Arcana hotter than a cardboard print of a woodcut of a chubby half-fish woman with two scaly appendages for legs. Every time I see her, it’s like I’ve drowned and gone to sex coffee heaven.

Starbucks’ Retro Logo [Business Week]

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Tags: branding, business, Business Week, coffee, food, Starbucks