Yakult
To my boy,
You had diarrhoea for almost a week.
It started with that picnic outing to the Botanic Gardens organised by your school. Perhaps the lunch prepared that day went slightly bad under the hot sun. Or maybe someone from another class passed you a nasty bug.
(Your mum was actually in overdrive the day before the outing. She was in two minds whether to let you go or to accompany you. Or to tag along quietly and watch you from afar. But that's another story for another day.. )
To ensure that you hydrate well and recover fast, we made you drink lots of water and came up with a creative way to do that. You've started learning the names and brands of everyday items.
You can recognise MacDonalds and the golden logo. And you refer to Starbucks affectionately as "咖啡 jie jie".
Yakult was another brand name that you picked up effortlessly, since there is always 1 or 2 packs in our fridge. So we started to collect empty Yakult bottles and fill them with water. And then we'll ask you, "Want to drink Yakult?" Which you'll always reply "Yes!" enthusiastically.
Your mini water bottles spread around the house
You are still young to start drinking the real Yakult (the probiotics powder prescribed by the Paeds didn't really work any magic for you right?)
When you get older, it will be fun to share with you how interesting the Yakult brand name is.
The brand in Chinese is called 益多 which literally means "many benefits".
益 yì = benefit & 多 duō = many
That's a smart way to promote a health drink right?
The same drink in China and Taiwan goes by the name 养乐多 yǎng lè duō.
Which roughly means cultivating loads of happiness and fun, more or less the same idea as 益多.
[read my previous post on creative Chinese brand names]
We have different flavours marked with different colours.
Can you recall what's the green, purple and orange flavours? Image from Yakult USA.
Fun fact #1
Yakult bottles are small and they are only sold in this size. Apparently, the ones in Singapore (100ml) are already the largest compared to those sold in other countries.
Why not sell in larger bottles and earn more $$$?
According to the company, a larger bottle may lead to opening & closing on several occasions which introduces other bacteria and affect the quality of Yakult. One small bottle is enough probiotics for 1 day so there's no need to sell in bigger servings.
Fun fact #2
The bottom part of the word 益 is the radical 皿 (pronounced mǐn).
It is a collective term for containers e.g. bowls, plates, baskets, boxes.
Besides "benefit", 益 can also mean to expand, increase, overflow.
Imagine water overflowing from a bowl. If you picture the water splashing out of the container, you can roughly see how the strokes make up the overall word.
The water splashes are like the parts in blue.
The container portion is in brown. Overall, the word 益 is formed.
Do you know, what are the other words which contain 皿?
Think of the words for containers such as boxes, plates, basins etc
Scroll down for answers ..
There you go!
disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post. I'm just linking a few ideas together:
how we used Yakult bottles to encourage my boy to drink water -> the Chinese brand name 益多 -> common words that have the radical 皿, typically the words for containers e.g. box or plate
But if the folks at Yakult are somehow interested, please feel free to drop me a note :)