What does "Bubba" mean to you?

Has any word so silly ever been so heavy with contradictory meanings? It started in the mouths of Southern babies, a sweet term of mispronounced endearment for their older brothers. It turned into a dismissive insult of Southerners as a whole. So, of course, Southerners reappropriated “Bubba” as a proud banner of defiance, like the targets of other former insults like “Yankee” or “Jesuit” or “queer” or “geek”.

But the many moods of Bubba don’t stop there. To little Roger Clinton, it meant the future President of the United States, his big brother Bill. To fans of Michigan State Spartans football, it means All-American defensive end Bubba Smith. To fans of the Police Academy movies, it also means Bubba Smith, who played Moses Hightower. To middle-aged men and women, Bubba apparently has something to do with t-shirts about shrimp.

And to visitors to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, for many years Bubba meant a 150-pound transgender grouper who was the first fish to undergo chemotherapy. If you think we could make that up, we’re flattered that you think so highly of our creativity.

But to us, to our guys who made this product test video, and to the reviewers who give it a 4.3 rating on Amazon, Bubba means the best insulated bottle of all time. We were skeptical - until we filled it with ice, left it in a hot car in the Texas sun all day, and the ice was still frozen. It sat on a desk in our office overnight again and the ice still hadn’t melted.

Like Bubba the Super Grouper, Bubba the Super Bottle swings the other way, too. “Holds a 1/2 pot of coffee and keeps it hot all day,” as one reviewer put it.

This Bubba Hero bottle is so damn good, it could single-handedly (but double-walledly) tip Bubba into full-on positive territory. The next time you hear somebody use “Bubba” as a diss - or the next time you’re tempted to do so yourself - remember those ice cubes staying cool in a 150-degree car. Not even Bubba Smith could pull that off.