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 == So Whatever Happened to 'Catch Phrases'? == 

 Back in the Sixties, there was an advertising campaign for Smirnoff Vodka, aimed at the jet-set, or rather, at people who liked to think they belonged to the jet-set ('jet-set' was a Sixties buzz-phrase for 'sophisticated'), anyway, the campaign used mock cocktail party repartee (a 'cocktail party' was... oh, never mind. Ditto, 'repartee') with the catch-phrase 'I used to think X was Y, until I discovered Smirnoff', where X denotes something only sophisticates enjoy, and Y equals something totally uncool do. So: 'I used to think the Ming Dynasty was a kind of Chinese restaurant, until I discovered Smirnoff.' Subliminal message: 'Drink Smirnoff vodka, and you will become a Cool Person.' This is not a new message from advertisers, but it became a hip phrase ('hip' meant...) anyway, this 'slogan', as it was known (sorry for the archaism. An archaism is... sigh) was widely parodied and repurposed, by sophisticates and hip people, into cocktail party one-liners like 'I used to thing f**king was a city in China until I discovered Smirnoff,' or 'I used to think cunnilingus was an Irish airline, until I discovered Smirnoff, ' and then the Smirnoff parodies started to get a tad off-colour, anyhow, is this an early instance of snow-cloning, or what?  "