This is stupid. How is "baked" difficult to pronounce?

And it's really annoying that intentional misspellings of words are seen to "modernize" them. This is probably a large reason why so many kids can't spell anymore.

The executives themselves must have been "baked" to think that this is a difficult word to pronounce!

goodness! are people so lazy that they can't take the time to say one more word??

jude c, don't worry. children have gwen stefani and fergie to teach them how to spell.

Very true, cyrizzle

bake your own beans...

I think this change is unnecessary and pretty dumb. However, I don't think it will change much in Britain. I mean people eat baked beans daily over there.. and people like me who get addicted to them don't really care what they are called. Its nice they will be lowering the sodium content, though.

i think this will change the company entirely! i mean really! business will boom, theyll be famous!!
Come on. they took the word baked out. big deal. i highly doubt this will change anything. i swear, these websites are like the breaking news in atlanta "Bus broke down on way to school. kids were late" is there really nothing to talk about anymore? lauren conrad, beanz.jeez.

i'm glad i'm not the letter "s" -- going out of style like baked on bean canz.

Don't like the "z" and I don't like the dropping of baked. They probably want people to refer to that dish as Heinz beanz, instead of baked beans, to get the brand in everyone's mind. Either way, I'm not a fan of it.

dameneko, the letter "s" will always have a home on sesame street.

@spazzydana, i too was wondering WTH was up with the lauren conrad media blitz today. did she get a new publicist? she doesn't annoy me nearly as much as heidi montag, but damn, there is such a thing as overexposure, you know?

@cyrizzle, yeah, there would be no slimy the worm without the letter "s" and sesame street would need to redo that hissing snake cartoon, "sssssssssssss, ssssssssss, ssssssnake!"

substitute the letter "z" there and the snake would be neither modern nor hip, it would be sleepy: "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzz, zzzznaaaaake..."

what if sesame street got renamed to "sesame streetz"? brought to you by the letter OH HELL NO?

as long as it doesn't end up looking like this: $e$ame $tr33tz. that will be the day that pbs goes down the crapper.

The change wasn't just to modernise (sic.) the brand but also to reflect the longstanding advert slogan "Heinz Meanz Beanz". And really, if Heinz really does mean beanz, then why on earth *should* they continue with the word "baked"? It's not as if, when you go up to a barman and order beans on toast, they have to ask you how you'd like those beans to be cooked. Beans, in my experience in the UK, means baked beans - just as in the United States, corn means sweetcorn (an etymological discussion for another time, surely). And having grown up in a country that adopted the '-ize' ending for words like the aforementioned modernise, I have a hard time chastising the inexorable adaptation of language to modern times, even if it is an advertising gimmick.

Nobody gets that upset when it's spelled "drive-thru" or "e-z pass." And cyrizzle, we'll always have a way to abbreviate what it is that we want to say. I went to college near a Wawa store and we, in our infinite haste, decided that it was best to pronounce only one of those syllables. Yes indeed, the 'Wa. Why we insisted on placing the apostrophe before the syllable is a further mystery, given that we could just as easily have deleted the second syllable instead.

Finally, for those etymological know-it-alls out there who have checked the OED and discovered the preferences of the British educational elite for the '-ize' ending from the Greek present infinitive suffix '-izein': yes, I understand that spelling it "modernize" isn't an exclusively American trait, but it is incorrectly derided as an Americanism by many Commonwealth nations, so let's roll with it.

Why does it matter what you call it? If they're good, people will buy them.

Heinz Beans are different than what we Americans typically call baked beans. Their ketchup-y version is very popular in Britain, and I've always thought it would be more popular here if people didn't expect them to be more like what we know as "Boston Baked Beans" which have a more complex flavor.

I love both styles for different reasons and in different applications. Heinz' Beanz will be just as good on toast (Brit-style) as they are now, regardless of what they call them, but separating themselves brandwise from the other baked beans is a good move, I think.

dumb idea! I like things staying the same and being classics, and I think everyone can appriciate that as well And what is with the Z? That's not even proper spelling, what is this thug beans?? LOL

"what is this thug beans?"

Hahahaaa--exactly!

Thug beans...they'll shoot a cap outta your ass!

I don't like to call it Heinz beans.

heinz beanz...poppin' caps out yo' a$$. LOL! don't mess with that flatulence!

one of the WORST misappropriations of street jargon i have ever seen was one of mcdonald's early dollar menu campaigns...i remember seeing billboards that said "I'd hit it!"

anyone remember these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mcdonalds_Id_hit_it_ad.jpg

what's next, "heinz beanz, i'd tap that!"?

I can understand why they just want to make it "Heinz Beanz" from a marketing perspective, but the fact that they felt the need to drop the "baked" because of its "too difficult to pronounce" is just ludicrous!

i think the words baked beans say something different than just beans.

It doesn't matter to me because I only eat Bush's Baked Beans.