Starbucks Unveils New Logo: Company Collapses

People lacking crankyjewishguy's (CJG) sense of perspective probably thought the big news story this week was the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, or maybe the impending start of a new season of American Idol. But those people would be wrong because the big news this week, and it really is HUGE, is that to celebrate its fortieth anniversary Starbucks has unveiled a new logo! It looks like this:

Just kidding. It actually looks like this:

No, the new logo isn't four coffee cups lined up on the bar at a Starbucks indicating a ten minute wait for your drink; it's the one to the far right. See the difference? The mermaid, which Starbucks calls the Siren, is no longer imprisoned in a ring that says "Starbucks Coffee." CJG thinks this means she's free to swim away. Maybe all the way to a Peet's. Somehow, though, this depiction of the evolution of the Starbucks logo reminds CJG of this:

As fans of CJG know, CJG has a love/hate relationship with Starbucks. First, he is a major shareholder in the company with about five shares, give or take. Second, he is the proud owner of the Starbucks equivalent of the frequent flyer card, a gold credit-card type thingee with his very own name on it. This means that every time he racks up fifteen drinks as Starbucks, or roughly every other day, he gets a coupon for a free drink. Third, though he frequents Starbucks with alarming frequency he is always at a low boil that the company doesn't take steps to discourage cell phone use in the stores which means his fellow patrons are always bringing him to the brink of a full boil. So, the news that Starbucks was changing its logo hit CJG right in the solar plexus, the region between Mercury and the sun.

Changing a corporate logo, especially one as ubiquitous as Starbucks', is no small proposition. They no doubt paid some consulting firm millions of dollars to come up with something as brilliant as simply removing part of the old logo and changing the mermaid from black and white to white and green, not coincidentally, CJG suspects, the color of money. Now they have to spend untold millions more to change all that stationery and all those business cards, toss about eight billion cups with the old logo and make fifteen billion of the new ones, and change the signage in every one of their seven million stores in the Milky Way Galaxy and on and on and on. The whole thing probably cost more than the gross national product of Canada. All this begs a simple question: could it possibly be worth it? Is CJG's decaf mocha latte with whipped cream going to taste any better as a result? CJG guesses he'll find out soon. Personally, CJG would have preferred a major investment in heavily upholstered furniture so he could sleep more comfortably at Starbucks, a matter he plans to raise at the next shareholder meeting.