MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Donald Duck has chased off a Mexican look-alike after a trademark dispute that simmered for decades between Disney and a beverage maker that copied the hot-headed cartoon character for its logo in 1940.
Pascual Boing, known in Mexico for tropical fruit drinks like mango and guayaba, is ditching its old logo based on Walt Disney Co.’s sailor-suited duck in favor of a rapper-style duck with spiky feathers and a blue baseball cap worn backward.
The updated character still will be known as Pato Pascual (Pascual Duck) and the beverage cooperative already has printed the new logo on some of its packaging. Alfonso Sanchez, No. 2 on the Pascual Boing board, said the company was replacing logos on its trucks and staff uniforms with the new design.
“The dispute hasn’t been decided one way or the other but we wanted to bring this face, which is years old, up to date,” he said. “The new one is similar but younger.
“It was time to modernize the logo.”
A Pascual Boing spokesman explained the logo change by saying, “To avoid ending up with a more complicated situation, court cases and everything, we decided to modify the logo.”
Disney declined to comment.
Pascual Boing adopted a logo identical to Donald Duck just as the spluttering white-feathered star was challenging Mickey Mouse’s popularity in the United States and making waves in Mexico with his famously mercurial character.
It got away with it for 40 years but a trademark dispute blew up about 30 years ago, just as Pascual Boing was battling massive new competition from U.S. fizzy cola drinks.
After a court case in Mexico, Pascual Boing altered Pato Pascual very slightly so it could keep the logo, the company spokesman said. But a few years ago Disney renewed its objections and said the duck still looked too much like Donald.
About the same time as the battle over its duck began, Pascual Boing was struck in the 1980s by a bitter labor dispute that led to workers taking control and transforming it into a cooperative. Today it has a workforce of about 5,000 and has clung onto 15 percent of Mexico’s soft drinks market.
Mexicans are among the world’s biggest guzzlers of sugary drinks and increasingly shun natural fruit beverages for Coca-Cola’s Coke, Sprite and apple-flavored Manzanita Lift or PepsiCo Inc.’s Pepsi Cola and Manzanita Sol.
Pascual Boing, known in Mexico for tropical fruit drinks like mango and guayaba, is ditching its old logo based on Walt Disney Co.’s sailor-suited duck in favor of a rapper-style duck with spiky feathers and a blue baseball cap worn backward.
The updated character still will be known as Pato Pascual (Pascual Duck) and the beverage cooperative already has printed the new logo on some of its packaging. Alfonso Sanchez, No. 2 on the Pascual Boing board, said the company was replacing logos on its trucks and staff uniforms with the new design.
“The dispute hasn’t been decided one way or the other but we wanted to bring this face, which is years old, up to date,” he said. “The new one is similar but younger.
Pascual isn’t your average soft-drink company. Started as a bottled water company, Refrescos Pascuals first CEO, Rafael Jimenéz, gave the finger to gringos when he ripped off Betty Boop and Donald Duck in 1940 to use as logos on his very Mexican soft drinks… in flavors you won’t find outside the Mexican aisle of your supermarket… guava, mango, tamarindo, mandarino… Betty, radically modified into “Lulu” still graces bottles, but maybe the new wise-guy duck fits.
Pascual was part of Mexico’s push for import substitution. If a product was available in the United States, then it was national policy to try to provide a similar product (even if lesser quality) in Mexico. Sometimes, this meant there was only one brand of something like canned soup (Herdez), but at least the Mexican consumer had the same kind of stuff available.
It also meant that Mexican products were available in packaged form. Maybe now in a few supermarkets catering to Mexican immigrants in the U.S. you can find canned flor de calabaza soup, or Burro-milk bath soap, or guava flavored soft-drinks, but until recently these were only available in Mexico.
In the 1990s, when globalism and NAFTA were all the rage, a lot of the Mexican equivalents disappeared or were bought up by U.S. multinationals. Even national brands like Aguardiente el Presidente and Cerverza Corona came under foreign ownership, or, in Corona’s case, major stock ownership by outsiders — Anheiser Busch: ¡que barbaró!
Pascual, despite appealing to Mexican tastes… and an advertising campaign based on patriotism (“the last refuge of a scoundrel… or a desperate company”) very nearly went under. They successfully turned themselves into a cooperative, 100% employee owned and operated.
The new, “mas fornido” Pato Pascual (I looked and looked for a photo, but couldn’t find one) was designed children of the owners. The new punk wise-ass duck really fits a company whose product literature never refers directly to their newest consumer product. Boing… and the Pascual cooperative is going up against the biggest market of them all, introducing their own version of what Sr. Jimenéz used to call “las aguas negras del imperio yanqui” (Yankee imperalist sewage): Boing Cola.
Pascual Boing is one of Mexico's most popular brands, recognized by its Pato Pascual logo. The company was founded in the early 1940s by Rafael Jimenez. Initially it produced popsicles, later purified water and finally soft drinks. After trying a couple of installations, the soft drink was installed in the Tránsito neighborhood of Mexico City in the fifties.
During the crisis of the eighties, the government decreed the increase in wages. However, the owner of Pascual refused the measure, arguing that it was not economically possible. The workers responded with a strike.
After three years, and with the advice of the communist Demetrio Vallejo, the government ruled in favor of the labor movement. In order not to pay, Rafael Jiménez filed for bankruptcy. Then the workers decided to buy the assets at auction, which resulted in the founding of the Sociedad Cooperativa Trabajadores de Pascual S.C.L.
The struggle for wages has not been the only one that Pascual Boig has had to fight, since his own identity was called into question. In its beginnings, the soft drink made use of the slogan "Fruit in your soda", which was accompanied by the image of the Paschal Duck, which retained similarities with Donald Duck, owned by Disney.
Of course, the American cartoon company was enraged by the profit that was made with the image of Donald Duck, which was the logo of Pascual Boing since 1940. However, the lawsuit against the Paschal Duck lasted until 1980, after which almost three decades of litigation happened. Finally, the Mexican company managed to have a way out of the conflict, changing the image of the Paschal Duck.
In 2007 Donald Duck ceased to be the Easter Duck and an image was selected through a contest. The new image of the soft drink retains certain reminiscences of the previous one, however it has a more stylized form. With this, Pascual legally defeated Disney.
The recipe for the logos was not new to the cooperative, since another of its most famous products, the Lulu soft drink, had a similar process. However, unlike the Paschal Duck, Lulu was born with modifications that avoided lawsuits. Despite this, the coincidences and confusions jump at first sight if compared to Betty Boop, cartoon by Max Fleischer for Paramount Pictures.
Finally, both characters lost their last battle against the Government of Mexico, when in 2020 the modification to NOM-051 was approved, which excludes animated characters or cartoons in the advertising of foods rich in sugars and fats. The purpose of the amendment is to discourage the consumption of such products, this in order to improve the health of the general population.
Pascual is the most famous soft drink company in Mexico. Throughout its history it has faced conflicts that have had it on the verge of disappearance. Today it has positioned itself thanks to its iconic and unmistakable Boing! fruit juices, as well as its soft drinks such as Lulu and Pato Pascual.
Founded in the 30s of the last century by Rafael Jiménez Zamudio, locating his first facilities in the colony Anahuac of Mexico City. After a move to San Rafael, Pascual finished for staying permanently in the Tránsito neighborhood.
The company began its introduction to the market with the slogan "Fruit in your soda", in addition to using Disney's famous Donald Duck as its logo. Its consolidation was created thanks to its excellent image management, being the Lulu soft drink, the favorite of children and adults in the 50s. For 1960 went on sale the until today famous Boing!
The strike that changed everything
1982 was a hard year for the company, which became a cooperative society after a decree of the Federal Government that established the salary increase of workers between 10% and 30%.
The consequences after the denial of the owner of Pascual was the strike orchestrated by the workers themselves, taking two Production plants on May 18, 1982.
A couple of weeks later and with the workers in Foot of struggle and resistance, Jiménez Zamudio arrived at the South Plant of Pascual with his bodyguards, who did not hesitate to shoot the dissenters, resulting in two deaths and 17 wounded. The fight followed three times. years more, meeting the demands of the workers in May 1985 when Pascual became a cooperative.
Disney, a stone More in the shoe
The colossus of the entertainment world became in a tremendous headache for Pascual when in 1980 he sued him for use undue of one of his characters: the friendly Donald Duck.
To remedy this issue and not imply major consequences for the company, Pascual decided to renew its image through a contest between the daughters and sons of its workers, resulting in the current one, made up of a duck wearing a blue cap.
Growth sharp
Thus, Pascual has remained firm in the convictions of those who give it life. Likewise, at the beginning of the century, out there of 2002, the company suffered a loss in its profits, to which the Workers raised their voices before Mexican society to promote their products, which represented a niche livelihood for hundreds of families Mexican
They managed to resume the march and a year later inaugurated one more plant, now in Tizayuca, state of Hidalgo. Fighting the temptations to be acquired by Coca-Cola, the tenacity of its people could more and the Independence was maintained, in addition to increasing profits by 25% in that year.
For the most recent decade, it managed to position itself as the main distributor of soft drinks and juices among food stores, mainly taquerias and torterías throughout the country. The company even exports to the United States, Cuba, Jamaica, Spain and Ireland.
A very tasty Mexican soft drink, Boing! originally came in tetrapacks, and currently it is available in 250 ml, 500 ml and liter packs, as well as in little returnable glass bottles. The drink has no carbonation, and it is available in many flavors, all of them fruit. The interesting bit is that the fruit used closely reflects the fruit available in the Mexican market: apples, strawberries, mango, guayaba, tamarind... In fact, Boing! is an attempt to recreate, industrially, the home made agua de fruta.
It is produced by Pascual, a company that was on the edge of financial disaster when the workers took over and turned it into a production coop. I would guess that its current problem is that it is in direct competition with the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, global companies with incredible advertising power. Bizarrely, the Pascual logo is ... Donald Duck, although the bottle bears no Disney copyright. I find it interesting that the Mexicans, despite their patriotism, happily drink Coca-Cola all day long, despite the availability of a local, Mexican owned, alternative.When in Mexico, don't confuse Boing! with Trebol, a really nasty, chemical tasting, fizzy bottled drink.
Within the visual culture appear certain elements that can refer to a specific time, is the case of the 20s and the flapper girls, those modern women who transformed the role of women within the new society of the twentieth century. Flappers flooded popular culture, reaching as far as cartoons. For the first time on August 8, 1926, appears in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, a flapper girl who would be the predecessor of Betty Boop; with this name she appears in 1932 in the short Stopping the Show, thus starting the animated series of this character.
Betty was the first cartoon character that was completely female and sexual, which led her to be a success and triggered a wave of marketing in her wake and that reaches our days. It also served as inspiration for many characters in different parts of the world.
An example in Mexico is Lulú, the national version of Betty and that was the face of a soft drink brand: the famous Lulú soft drinks of the Pascual Boing Cooperative, this soft drink went on sale in the 50s and has become a legend of Mexican popular culture.
The obvious appropriation of this character and others such as Donald Duck, turned into the Paschal Duck, resulted in a lawsuit by the Disney studios in 2007, so the soft drink was forced to modify its logo a little; Even so, we can easily recognize the origin of these characters.
In the MODO we see advertising objects as a piece of our history, this time we remember the appearance of the sexy Betty Boop and celebrate it with a tribute "to the Mexican", presenting the beautiful Lulu in her place.