Several products we've covered — FOGGAR, Subox Mate, IGET MOON K5000 — carry flavor names with real personality: Fcuking Fab, Two Apple Shisha, Blueberry Razz Lemon. These names are generally fine in the US market, but move to a different market and the name itself can be enough to keep an entire shipment off the shelf. This piece pulls together the flavor-naming rules we know of across markets, so they can be checked before packaging and product selection lock in.
New Zealand: generic, government-approved terms only
This is the clearest rule we've found so far — New Zealand's Ministry of Health requires flavor names to use officially approved generic descriptors (like Strawberry, Mint, Lemon), with branded or creative naming not permitted.
Checking against flavors covered elsewhere on this site:
- "Fcuking Fab" (a profanity-adjacent name) — very likely non-compliant outright
- "Two Apple Shisha" ("Shisha" references hookah/waterpipe culture, not a standard generic term) — very likely non-compliant
- "Blueberry Razz Lemon" — broken into purely generic components like "Blueberry" + "Raspberry" + "Lemon," this might work, but the combined branded-style name as written carries risk
This isn't speculation on our part — it's stated directly in New Zealand's regulatory guidance (see our earlier New Zealand-focused piece for more detail).
US: some scrutiny on "youth-appealing" naming, but no hard word list
The US doesn't impose a New Zealand-style hard generic-terms requirement at the federal level, but the FDA does treat "whether flavor naming appeals to minors" as a factor in PMTA review — candy-adjacent or cartoonish naming (like "Skittles," which evokes a candy brand) is itself something enforcement pays attention to. This lines up with the "selective enforcement" logic covered in our earlier US piece: the naming itself isn't illegal per se, but it makes a product more likely to land on the enforcement priority list.
EU: TPD constrains naming indirectly through packaging rules
The EU's TPD doesn't mandate generic-terms-only naming the way New Zealand does, but it does broadly restrict packaging and promotional material — nothing that could be read as implying a health benefit or appealing to minors. Flavor naming combined with cartoonish packaging design can trigger the same compliance issue even if the name alone seems fine — naming and packaging need to be evaluated together, not the name in isolation.
A quick self-check list
For evaluating a specific flavor/product across markets, run through these:
- Does the name contain profanity-adjacent wordplay or internet slang (like Fcuking Fab)? Likely non-compliant in markets like New Zealand, and worth caution elsewhere too
- Is the name a pure combination of generic fruit/mint-style descriptors? The more purely generic, the better it travels across markets
- Does it borrow associations from another brand (like a candy brand name)? This is a risk factor under FDA review specifically
- Does the packaging pair the name with cartoonish/candy-style visuals? A compliant name paired with problematic packaging can still fail overall
Practical guidance for product selection and packaging
If the same product needs to cover both the US and a stricter market like New Zealand, the more realistic approach is preparing different flavor names/packaging per market, rather than using one global naming scheme. This is the same logic covered in our nicotine-strength piece — naming, like strength, is a variable that needs market-specific adaptation, not a one-time decision that works everywhere.
(General information only, not legal advice — consult a lawyer familiar with compliance in your target market before making business decisions.)