Talk:Michelin Man

Latin
Wasn't 'bibendum' a latin word somehow related to drinking? I'm not sure, but if that's the case, someone should find out more about drinking and write an article about it. ~Phvli

Something tells me you're the perfect person to write an article about drinking. But yes, "bibendum" is the gerund form of the Latin verb bibo, "to drink". A more literal translation of "Nunc est bibendum" would be "Now is drinking," the gerund implying that "drinking" is what is going on, as opposed to anything else. 96.26.89.144 (talk) 19:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Contradiction: First introduced in 1894 or 1898?
The first paragraph of the lede currently says that the symbol was introduced in 1894, but the second says that it wasn't created until 1898, though it was partially inspired by a stack of tires Edouard Michelin saw four years earlier. -- ToE 00:03, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Move

 * Bibendum, commonly referred to as the Michelin Man,

is not how we start articles. The  of this figure is "the Michelin Man" and that's where the article should be. (Ngram results are skewed by the Latin phrase and other uses of Bibendum but still show "Michelin Man" as more common and a vanilla Books search of the two terms verifies that most instances of "Bibendum" have nothing to do with this guy.) — Llywelyn II   04:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 15:10, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Yodin and LlywelynII. Done. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:29, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 09:09, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

"Master of all he surveyed"?
"Bibendum was a lord of industry, a master of all he surveyed, and a patriotic expounder of the French spirit."

We're talking about a mascot, right? Why is the opening here so florid? And why does it ascribe intention and agency to a marketing instrument? I have no doubt that Bibendum's/Michelin Man's influence was great, but let's talk about it in real terms and ascribe motivations to the actual actors, not their inanimate creation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aprotim (talk • contribs) 09:33, 21 May 2016 (UTC)


 * We're talking about a powerful advertising device. I've rephrased it to emphasize that's the role he was made to play--the description is fully cited to a reliable source: Stephen L. Harp, Marketing Michelin. Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) Rjensen (talk) 09:55, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Broken Links
Many citations are not only old, but the archived versions of the original sources used flash, which is now defunct. As a result, many citations are no longer valid. Alehanro999 (talk) 15:35, 31 July 2023 (UTC)