Ski-Doo Yellow
Trademark: Ski-Doo Yellow
First Used: 1959
First Registered: May 2002
Current Owner: Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. [1]
Trademark Type: non-traditional trademark; trade dress; position mark
Primarily Associated With: snowmobiles [2]
Brief (and likely incomplete) History [3]:
The color yellow applied to the hood of a snowmobile is a registered trademark used in connection with Ski-Doo® brand snowmobiles. The Ski-Doo Model K60 was first released in 1959, and it was covered top to bottom in the color yellow. Since that time, Ski-Doo brand snowmobiles have consistently included the Ski-Doo Yellow color in some form, most typically applied to the hood of the snowmobile.
Why the color yellow? The truth may be lost in history. One story theorizes a purely functional origin: the color yellow is easy to spot and was already in use on other Bombardier machines. Another popular story posits a decision made by chance: Bombardier did not have much money at the time, so he went to a government auction and bought a large, cheap batch of paint that happened to be yellow. Yellow was a common large volume paint used at the time, including for the yellow stripes on roadways.
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[1] Ski-Doo, Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP), https://ski-doo.brp.com/us/en/.
[2] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2,572,433, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75297929&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[3] Notable Ski-Doo Presented to Hall of Fame Museum, VINTAGE SLEDS, posted February 10, 2009, and available at https://vintagesleds.com/notable-ski-doo-presented-to-hall-of-fame-museum/; Why Ski Doo's Are Yellow, DOOTALK, last post December 18, 2021, and available at https://www.dootalk.com/threads/why-ski-doos-are-yellow.1041634/; Joseph-Armand Bombardier, THE CANADIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, last edited January 13, 2023, and available at https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joseph-armand-bombardier.