Denmark, General Mills, and Beatrix Potter

            Welcome back, readers. I was going to start my reinstatement here at the newly-designed—and named—The Complector Coterie with the beginning of a series outlining irrelevant Google Images results. Instead, I had an amazing revelation I wanted to share with you.

            Currently, I’m ill and mostly bedridden, so as I fumed that I’m unable to get up and do…anything, I started thinking for possible rabbit-character names. I always find naming animals a pain, due to the overabundance of cliché pet names. (Still not sure how they derived the chopped-up-sounding “Fido” from the beautiful “fidelus.”)

            Anyway. The animal I have the pleasure of naming is a rabbit, as I’ve said, and I wanted to pay homage to a dear children’s author I read and loved growing up. Beatrix Potter. I was thinking to myself, “Bea? Mm, well maybe. Potter sounds too much like J.K. Rowling should sue me if I use that (plus all I’ll think of is Harry), and I’m not too fond of Trix…Trix. TRIX. A RABBIT NAMED…TRIX.”

            That’s when it hit me, dear readers.

            A RABBIT named TRIX. Ring a bell?

            Now, out of a huge love of Peter Rabbit, I’m not sure whether I should be offended that this cereal is so bland when Beatrix Potter’s stories are delicious, or more shocked at myself that I never saw this until now. Perhaps we should also look at the general media altogether that they don’t give the proper recognition Beatrix Potter deserves. At the General Mills Cereal page about Trix, there is no mention whatsoever that the rabbit mascot is in some way connected to Beatrix Potter. However, the first appearance of the rabbit was 1957. Beatrix Potter passed away in 1943. I wondered if there had been some connection that could be traced through obscure links in chronology, but the year gap blew me theory out of the water. Maybe the whole thing was a shady plagiarism dealt under the table that no one could pick up on due to its overtly covertness.

            What say you, readers? Is this a huge coincidence, or some gross understatement of subliminal copyright infringement? Perhaps my analytic mind is taking the conclusions too far…again. I haven’t found any articles relating the Trix Rabbit and Beatrix Potter, or any inspiration that could connect the two, but something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark about this.