Becoming a benchmark

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I come from a family who lived on doing small business in a general merchandise store. It's practically the reason why I never got into sports because summers and class breaks were spent on tending the store. It could probably be the reason why I (and other Chinese for that matter) was good at math. Over the years that I spent summers and breaks in the store, I realized that some products/merchandise were the leaders in the market that people used them as the generic name of the product itself. Take the case of Colgate. Some customers would say "Let buy a Close-up Colgate". Close-up was another toothpaste brand. Viva and Purico were two brands of lard and people woud also say "May I buy a Purico Viva" making Purico as the generic name itself for the lard (or a benchmark). Another was Blue Wheel and Perla (both were laundry bars) where people would also look for a "Blue Wheel Perla". Not to be forgotten were Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola where people would say "I'd like to buy a Coke Pepsi". I also remember the time when the word Filipina (a female citizen of the Philippines) was defined as a "domestic helper or DH" because there was a time when many Filipnas would seek employment abroad becaue of better pay even if they were professionals back home (as in teacher, accountant or even a nurse sometimes).