This week’s excellent potmanteau: Armachillo clothing from Duluth Trading Co.: ARMADILLO (for its tough protective scales) + CHILL (for cooling ability), with CHILL put iside ARMADILLO (ARMA – DILL – O), replacing the rhyming DILL. Pretty much immediately understandable, and entertaining as well:
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(Note the graphic highlighting of the CHILL inside ARMADILLO.)
The company on this website, in “The revolution in men’s underwear” of 11/28/15, about premium brands and luxury brands, plus:
A different marketing strategy. While most menswear has moved in the direction of style, fashion, and sexiness, one firm, the Duluth Trading Company, has gone for a marketing strategy that elaborately pushes working-class masculinity, with pants (that is, trousers) claimed to be super-durable (even a grizzly bear couldn’t take them on), and the like.
In addition to the working-class persona the company adopts, it’s also very playful, as in its tv commercials for the Armachillo products. You can watch commercials for men’s shirts here and for men’s underwear here. There are clothes for women as well; this site shows what Armachillowear is available. The stills for things like the “men’s Armachillo cooling short boxer briefs” —
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— have seriously stuffed pouches.
Finally, a note on sandwich portmanteaus like Armachillo. From my 4/11/12 posting “Sandwich portmanteaus: lepicdary”:
In a sandwich portmanteau, one contributor is put inside the other, replacing some medial material in the second: L – EPIC – DARY has EPIC inserted within L – EGEN – DARY, replacing the EGEN of LEGENDARY.
LEPICDARY is a dubious portmanteau at best, not at all easy to understand right off the bat. ARMACHILLO, on the other hand, is portmangold.
