Rubbers, crayons and ball points

I noticed that Marina, the Spanish half of the Notes in Spanish team, used the verb to hoover in one of their videos instead of to vacuum. We Brits do that all the time, use trade names as nouns and verbs: Thermos flasks, Astroturf, App (apparently it's from Apple not application), Cashpoint and Lilo being examples. So do Spaniards. I've mentioned things like Danone (yogurt), Mistol (washing up liquid), Minipimer (hand blender) and Táper (from Tupperware but which you have to pronounce as Tap-per in Spanish) before. Every now and again I come across new ones, Chirucas for climbing boots and Camisetas de Abanderado for a singlet type vest. I suppose it's a bit like we old people used to buy Jockey's and Y Fronts.

In English, for ball point pen, I usually say Biro (Named for the inventors as I understand it) and instead of saying boli (short for bolígrafo) in Spanish I've tried to use Bic. Apparently though, for most Spaniards, Bic is precise, it's for the sort of cheap Biro with a hexagonal see through barrel and a colour coded top. It cannot be used to describe ball point pens in general. Then I read a story which suggests that there are other things quintessentially Spanish down at the papelería or local stationers. Alpino crayons, the ones with the crayon doubling as a signpost and the little fawn on the box, and, for this piece, Milan rubbers (The thing for removing pencil lines though I notice the Cambridge English Exams now uses eraser, presumably to stop the North Americans giggling).

So the article in my online newspaper said there has been a Twitter storm about the news that Milan was going to stop producing their model 430 rubber. The eraser was described in the article as "legendary" (mítica) and "the rubber with which generations had grown up". 

What the company had actually said was that they were going to stop producing the green rubbers but that production of the white and pink ones would continue. The number of comments, and the vehemence of them, on Twitter, became such that the company responded, and they didn't forget to add in a bit of advertising. They said that they'd been producing the particular model of rubber since 1918, that it was just one of the 60 models of rubbers they marketed within their 2,000 lines of stationery and that, as long as there was a demand, they would continue to produce the green ones even though their market research suggested that people preferred the pink or white ones. 

So, now you know. I bet you never considered buying the correct model and colour of rubber was another way of integrating into Spanish society.