Warning: Pun Ahead

I’m a great fan of JD ‘Illiad’ Fraser’s strip cartoon “User Friendly”. It charts the trials and tribulations of the workers at a medium sized internet provider, Columbia Internet. For reasons that don’t need to be made clear one of the characters is an animated ball of fluff and another is an artificial intelligence who has been ported between many platforms. Today’s cartoon reminded me of an anecdote from PLoS’s earlier days.

The way I heard it a group of the PLoS crew were sitting around a bar in SF drinking margaritas and trying to think of ways to get the PLoS name on the tip of everyone’s tongue. It was getting late, even for the most hardened PLoS folks, when someone came up with the idea of putting our logo on handy dispensers of waxed string.

Yep you guessed it:

Dental PLoS

Which leaves just one question (other than how did the committer of this pun get out of the bar alive). What is your favourite marketing give away? What item, bearing PLoS insignia, would you value and cherish way beyond its monetary value? You never know, we might make some.