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Why "Frutics"?

This question can quite naturally arise from visitors and readers of my site.

The fact is that collecting of fruit stickers or, generally speaking, collecting of fruit labels is a relatively young collecting hobby.

According to a citation from the Fyffes [1] company website ‑ "...Fyffes was the first company in the world to use a fruit brand (you can check with your Great Grandfathers!). In 1929 we created our blue label as a sign of confidence in our quality…" ‑ the first sticker have appeared on fruits in 1929. Here is a leaflet of those times:

                      a)                                          b)

Pic.1. a) advertising leaflet of the first sticker of the company "Fyffes" (1929); b) modern stickers with the brand "Fyffes"

But in mass quantities, stickers on fruits began to appear at the beginning of the year 60, and all the large collections presented today in the Internet space started at the beginning of the year 70-80. Thus, in essence, the gathering of fruit labels began about 50 years ago, i.e. this is really a very young hobby that is hardly more than half a century old.

This is so young hobby that it doesn’t even have a common name among collectors, like those that were invented, for example, for stamp posters collectors ‑ philately, or matchbox stickers collectors ‑ phillumeny, or for cheese label collectors – fromology [2] (from french "fromage" ‑ cheese) or for such an ancient hobby as collecting coins ‑ numismatics... etc.

Attempts to find something similar for the name of collecting fruit stickers or, in general, fruit labels, for example, on Wikipedia or anywhere else in the Internet ended in failure. The result was negative. I have found nothing.

Therefore, I came to the conclusion that any collector involved into this hobby could come up with a name for collecting of fruit labels as a hobby, publish it (for example, on a web site in the Internet) and try to make this name known to as many collectors as possible. Namely that is what I have tried to do using my site. And if suddenly the invented name is successful, then over time it can become a popular and even common term among collectors community.

Thus, I did not stand aside, and came up with a name for our youngest hobby, "frutics", perhaps subconsciously referring to the rather distant consonance with the term "numismatics" for one of the most ancient collecting hobbies.

The definition of the invented term looks like this: frutics is the collecting of all types of fruit labels, including the most popular of them - fruit stickers.

The obvious merits of the term are its brevity and easiness of pronunciation. In addition, the root of the word - “frut” - in almost all European languages synonymously means “fruitage”, i.e. not only the fruits itself, but the fruitage in common sense, i.e. the fruits collectively - berries, vegetables, nuts and mushrooms.

Thus, the term "frutics" is absolutely universal, as it covers all types of fruit stickers and labels from the entire set of fruitage.

"Frutics" could be considered as a generalized form of the term. Derived terms may look like "fruticophilie", "fruticophil" or even "fruticoman". The description of everything connected with this hobby can be called "fruticology". By the way, this essay can be considered as my humble contribution into fruticology.

Links:

[1] http://www.fyffes.com/who-we-are/the-blue-label

[2] http://fromology.narod.ru/

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