In cafeterias and restaurants around the world, the coffeepot with a distinctive orange band around the neck is immediately recognized as the one containing decaf coffee. Today most people don’t know how that tradition began. Actually, it was once one of the world’s most effective branding campaigns, even though these days consumers don’t associate the color with the product that started it all.

The orange label premiered in 1923 when Sanka, the first commercial decaf coffee, appeared on grocery store shelves in America. In 1932, General Foods bought Sanka (a catchy contraction of “sans caffeine”) and set out to promote the brand to restaurants and diners by giving away free “Sanka-orange” coffeepots and a few samples of the product. Customers and waiters came to recognize that orange signified Sanka, and over time it became the generic color-code for any and all decaf coffee brands.

Decaf coffee itself is an innovation that resulted from trying to salvage a disaster. Legend has it that in 1903 a German coffee merchant named Ludwig Roselius discovered that a shipment of coffee beans got soaked in seawater en route from Nicaragua to Germany. Before throwing out the “ruined” beans, Roselius and his assistant, Karl Wimmer, decided to test them and found that exposure to water actually removed most of the caffeine without affecting the taste. Further research led them to develop the first commercial decaffeination process using steam and chemical solvents — the method used for many years to produce the Sanka brand of decaf coffee. Today Sanka has been overshadowed by dozens of trendier decaf labels, but the brand still has a ubiquitous presence with its signature color orange.

Hello Kitty turned 35 on November 1; in human years that would make her around 150. She is still innocently cute (or kawaii as the Japanese would say) – and very rich, earning more than a billion dollars a year for licensing her image. She has got her little paws into everything, from toys to backpacks, hair clips to jewelry, writing pads to Airstream trailers, wedding rings to tattoos, assault rifles to adult massage devices, Stratocaster guitars to an Airbus jet, theme maternity hospital in Taiwan to bank debit cards. She has her own theme park, TV anime cartoon series and video games. All this for a little creature with two dots for eyes, a yellow button nose and no mouth at all. Even after 35 years, we don’t even know her name.

Hello Kitty is the cartoon image drawn by designer Ikuko Shimizu for Sanrio. She first appeared on a vinyl coin purse in Japan in 1974 and then popped up in the United States two years later. According to her Wikipedia profile, she lives in England with her parents and identical twin, Mimmy, who can be identified by the fact that she wears different colored clothes and her bow under the opposite ear. (Poor Mimmy has been clearly overshadowed by her charismatic sister; most of us didn’t even know she existed.)

Hello Kitty may not have aged, but her fans have. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Christina Aguilera and Tyra Banks profess to loving her. In 2008, the Christian Dior collection was featured in the Japanese Vogue with Hello Kitty as a model. Bikers and punk rockers embrace her likeness. This is one smart feline; she’s developed a cult following of people who are irresistibly drawn to cute. Not to be catty, but we are green with envy. Meow!

Mattel’s Barbie doll, the beloved ingénue role model of every little girl, is 50. If she were a real person, she’d undoubtedly have strands of gray hair, a hint of midriff flab, and hot flashes. Given her propensity for the latest fashion, by today’s standards, she would also be considered shallow – the Paris Hilton of the doll world. Fortunately, Barbie will forever be the fantasy woman of our youth.

From a commercial perspective, Barbie is as successful and enduring as Oprah. She has outlasted Cabbage Patch kids, Beanie Babies, sock monkeys and Raggedy Ann.

Invented by Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, Barbie debuted on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair wearing a black-and-white zebra striped, one-piece swimsuit. Handler’s inspiration for Barbie was a German doll called Bild Lilli. The German comic strip character upon which the Lilli doll was based was a seductive and sassy secretary who loved to hang out in bars and unabashedly pursued rich men. One cartoon strip had her saying, “I could do without balding old men, but my budget couldn’t.” As a doll, the curvaceous Lilli came with a wardrobe, sold separately, that mirrored the fashion of the 1950s.

Handler’s persona for Barbie was more wholesome than Lilli, but no less fashion conscious. Barbie’s eternal commercial appeal is her constantly updated clothes and accessories. Barbie’s wardrobe ensured that little girls who loved playing dress up would continually buy new outfits to make sure Barbie was appropriately dressed for any occasion, from beach parties to prom night. This wardrobe changed from culture to culture and era to era, seamlessly evolving from psychedelic to disco to punk.

Handler named Barbie and her boyfriend, Ken, after her two children, but it was designer Jack Roberts and his partner Ralph Carson of the legendary ad agency, Carson/Roberts Advertising, who created the dolls’ girl-and-boy next door identities and bestowed them with their own names – Barbara Millicent Roberts and Ken Carson.

To date, more than one billion Barbie dolls have been sold to kids around the world, not to mention billions of teeny dresses, swimsuits, T-tops, sportswear, purses and accessories for every occasion.

Happy birthday, Barbie. You go, girl!