Fury over the new Starbucks logo is prompting a boycott
by those who think the new logo is indecent.
A Christian group out of San Diego has found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee.
The Resistance says the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute," Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. "Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks."
The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.
The logo will run on Starbucks cups for "several more weeks," said company spokeswoman Bridget Baker, and will live on as the logo for Pike Place bags of coffee.
The image is a less-revealing throw-back version of what the chain used for many years starting when it first opened in Seattle in 1971. That original logo was resurrected in its Pacific Northwest outlets for a time in 2006 to mark the chain's 35th anniversary.
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The explanation for that initial logo design is explained in the book "Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time," written by company founder Howard Schultz:
"[Creative partner Terry Heckler] poured [sic] over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store's original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself."
We feel compelled to point out that she's a mermaid. Mermaids, of course, have no legs at all. And as far as the bare breasts go, we say: who cares? We certainly don't. So long as our Iced Venti Cafe Americano (no water, extra ice), arrives in perfect condition every morning, we don't care which scantily-clad sea denizen adorns our cup.
