There was so much online buzz today which generated from a show called Dragon’s Den here where essentially businesses offer a percentage of their business in exchange for investor funds. In this case, there was a company that was capitalizing on the Boba Tea popularity which started in Taiwan and has slowly became popular everywhere. Their take was to make this into a can form and they called it “Bobba.”
One of the guest investor was actor Simu Liu and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about the company as it appeared the company was jumping on the success of the drink without any kind of cultural reference as to the drink’s origin. For example, the founder actually said “It’s not a ethnical product anymore” and other quotes such as “so we took the Asian version and made it with juice.” There was one comment from the investor where he talked about “cultural appropriation” and that is what generated the controversy it seems.
For example, some people of Asian heritage find this offensive that a company would do this. As a result, apparently the company lost a lot of sale and support where they even had to issue an apology. Even one of the investors that agreed to invest in the company backed out afterwards. You then have the other side where people were criticizing Simu Liu as he has played various roles such as a Korean when he is not one in which he profited from. So the argument is he could potentially do the same in this regards.
If the company didn’t actually make its name so close to the Boba Tea they would have probably been okay I would say. But that is a little sketchy to try and take the “culture” away from a product. For example, everyone knows sushi originated from Japan and people have no issues making variations of a Sushi to local tastes. However, imagine one guy then saying they are taking the Japanese out of Sushi and making their own product called “Susshi”. I don’t think that would get a positive reaction either. I think for anything, if you are going to piggy back off the success of a popular cultural item then you should try and acknowledge the origins while still making it your own.