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Let's just play this one straight. This is Fukuppy, the cartoon mascot recently unveiled by Fukushima industries, an Osaka-based maker of refrigerators. The Internet took this one and ran with it, and it wasn't the design -- a cutsey, winged egg -- it was the name of the mascot, coupled with the name of the company.

Right off the bat, people assumed the mascot had something to do with the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and in the context of the way the plant was perceived to have mismanaged the disaster, the name seemed ridiculously appropriate.

Fukushima Industries was blindsided by the instant negative reaction. To the Japanese creators, the name innocently combined the Japanese word for good fortune with letters from the English word "happy." Furthermore, they had no connection to Fukushima Prefecture, where the ill-fated reactor was located. Their firm is named after its founder – a certain Mr Fukushima – whose name shares the kanji characters used to write the name of the tsunami-hit prefecture hundreds of miles away in Japan's north-east. Bewildering as it must have been, the company was forced to react to the sniggering. They naturally apologized, and promptly removed the mascot's English name from its Web site. By the way, according to this item in The Independent, the correct pronunciation of the egg's name is actually Foo koo pee (Ha! They said "pee"). This is not an uncommon problem. The Japanese have a history of using, or rather, misusing, English words. Consider that one of Japan's most popular sports drinks is proudly called Pocari Sweat.