VRURC this! 11 delightfully dumb brand names I found on Amazon

I spend a lot of time searching Amazon listings. In addition to standard shopping for cheap tchotchkes, I have to find deals to show you, dear reader, pretty much every work day. And also “Prime Day,” which has somehow become multiple weeks every year. I’ve noticed a funny trend: the “brand names” or store names for the third-party Amazon sellers are getting really frickin’ stupid.

There’s a reason for this. Drop shipping, the practice of opening a “store” that’s basically just passing along mass-produced generic items to shoppers through a unified online storefront, is now a massive and inescapable practice. Drop shipping has become a modern replacement for the middleman who used to sell items to local department stores by the millions, including white-box items that would be re-branded a dozen times over with store brands or other labels.

Pexels/tiger Lilly

So far, so good, right? You get a near-endless supply of cheap goods mostly manufactured in China, and you get them shipped insanely quickly via Amazon. Amazon gets a ridiculously huge amount of listings, admittedly many of which are repeats of identical products at essentially the same prices. And the drop-shippers get a job, albeit a pretty grueling one staring at a computer all day trying to squeeze a nickel out of a penny with razor-thin profit margins after all those parts of the retail machine get their cut.

But there are hoards of drop shippers competing for your dollar on Amazon and every similar store that has a third-party seller system. And every single one of those stores needs a unique name to sell with, whether or not anyone actually considers them a “brand” unto themselves. For every company like Acer or Lenovo selling directly to customers on Amazon, there are tens of thousands of small businesses or even individual sellers doing the same thing. And every one of them needs a name.

So, we’re now in a situation not unlike the race for unique or relevant URLs in the early 2000s. Except that the “relevant” part of the equation is no longer necessary. So the brand names are essentially meaningless, they just need to exist. Ryan George made light of this in one of his videos:

And since I’ve spent more hours than I can count combing through Amazon listings, I’ve found names that are far more nonsensical than “Floorgoo” or “Barbintron.” Here are the most outstanding — meaning dumbest — that I’ve found in the last year.

VRURC

Amazon

I’ve actually bought from this brand. It’s one of many that drop ships this neat little portable battery, which integrates both charging cables and a wall outlet into its design. It’s fantastic for throwing in your pocket for a long day out, no extra chargers or cables needed. But “Vrurc” sounds like a word I’d blurt out after stubbing my toe in mixed company and trying not to swear.

Taygeer

Amazon

I can’t decide if “Taygeer” is what you get when everyone has already taken every possible brand name variation of “gear” or it’s someone trying to think of what you call an obscure species of monkey that only gets thirty seconds of Attenborough narration in a nature documentary. Anyway, they sell laptop bags.

Gogoonike

Amazon

I suspect that someone was trying to cheekily get “Nike” into their brand name on this one, despite the fact that this Amazon store only sells tech accessories. How would you even pronounce it? Go-goo-nik-ee? Go-go-on-ike? For some reason I want to read it as “baboon-like,” so apparently I have simians on the brain.

Jajafook

Amazon

Stylized in all caps, JAJAFOOK is a vendor of extremely cheap and showy men’s jewelry, complete with a faux-military stamp font on the storefront. If said logo is to be believed, the name is in fact a registered trademark, and I was able to find a listing for said trademark going back to 2018. So someone paid an actual attorney to make sure no one dared to steal that name. Wonders never cease.

Ladybro

Amazon

Well, that’s unfortunate. Without wishing to limit anyone’s gender expression, “Ladybro” seems like an off-putting name for any brand that wants to sell clothing to either ladies or bros. Ladybro offers hats and hat-adjacent accessories, as well as one neck gaiter in a bunch of different colors.

Quatish

Amazon

I’m fairly sure “Quatish” is the name of a species of alien I read in a 1970s sci-fi paperback. Their society was a thinly-veiled social commentary on the evils of unions, or something like that. Or maybe it’s the sound your shampoo makes when you squeeze it out of one of the TSA-approved squishy bottles this brand sells.

Mosptnspg

Amazon

Okay, now we’re venturing into the territory of names that just seem to be randomly generated. “Mosptnspg” looks like a typo you get after your cat walks across your keyboard. Which is appropriate, since this brand sells a bunch of mechanical keyboards with colorful keycaps… thankfully without the brand name anywhere on the case. Oh, and you road warriors will be happy to hear that at least some of them are “Protable.”