• Red states and blue states didn't always refer to Republican and Democratic electorates, respectively. Red and blue were frequently used to describe American political affiliations, but which color represented which party was not consistent until relatively recently (ca. 2000) -- for instance, during the Cold War, who wanted to be described as "red" in American politics? [url]
• Studies of how linguistic descriptions of color affect the way people perceive colors have rekindled the idea that language can shape how people think. And that's doubleplusgood. [url]
• Babies used to be dressed up in all white, but then little boys started only wearing blue... and girls would wear only pink. Again, this convention wasn't settled on for a long time, and it could have easily gone the opposite way (boys in pink, girls in blue). The real loss is in gender neutral colors for children's clothing.... [url]

Nestle argued that a colour cannot be trademarked because colours are widely used in trade and purple was commonly in use by other companies when Cadbury applied for the trademark.

The registrar came down in favour of Cadbury, citing the results of research showing that consumers strongly associated the colour purple with Dairy Milk, which was the best-selling chocolate bar in the U.K. at the time of the application in 2004.

The registrar came down in favour of Cadbury, citing the results of research showing that consumers strongly associated the colour purple with Dairy Milk, which was the best-selling chocolate bar in the U.K. at the time of the application in 2004.

Nestle scored some concessions. The registrar ruled that Cadbury had not shown that its use of the colour purple in relation to chocolate assortments was strong enough to be included.

Their fingers did not turn orange. And their brains did not register much cheese flavor, even though the Cheetos tasted just as they did with food coloring.

"People ranked the taste as bland and said that they weren't much fun to eat," said Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell University and director of the university's Food and Brand Lab.

When tasteless yellow coloring is added to vanilla pudding, consumers say it tastes like banana or lemon pudding. And when mango or lemon flavoring is added to white pudding, most consumers say that it tastes like vanilla pudding.