Sometimes a GM just wants a few names to drop into a campaign to help give a sense of a lived-in universe. Here are 5 name brands for use in your Starfinder campaigns, focusing on being interesting and memorable, rather than worrying much about game rules. Though if a GM wants to add the kinds of manufacturer rules presented in Starfinder Armory, these are great brands to that kind of additional work.

Each brand is presented in the following format.

Name: The brand’s common, public-facing name.

Tagline: The marketing phrase most associated with the brand. Much to advertising companies’ frustration, this may or may not be from any of the last few marketing campaigns. For example, Skitter-Minder’s “Need a hand? Have six!” targline is literally more than a century old, and despite there being 11 different ad campaigns since it was last used, it’s still the phrase everyone thinks of

Business ventures: Name brands are generally associated with one or more business ventures, be that stores, goods for sale, or services. A brief description of each brand’s most common ventures is listed here, though sometimes a brand will try to branch out in weird ways, like Rezort beast jerky, or Uberdar-clowns for children’s parties.

EATABLES

“It’s digestible.”

The EATABLES brand makes cheap, shelf-stable, bland food that can be safely consumed by 417 known sapient species, are legal in all known settlements and worlds, and are acceptable foodstuffs under 2,639 sets of religious rules. The two most common product lines are EATABLE Paste (a nutrient goo that comes in squeeze tubes), and EATABLE Wafers (flat disks that dissolve in the mouth, and if mixed with water can be turned into EATABLE Paste).

On the one hand, no one is happy to end up with just EATABLES as rations. on the other hand, everyone prefers it to starving, and they are dense, last centuries without spoilage, and are gentle on the stomach.

Gathicca

“Always formal. Always comfortable. Always durable. Always… Gathicca.”

Gathicca is a fashion clothing brand that originally focused on the kalo fashionista market, but has since spread to dozens of other cultures. Because intermixing societies from scores of worlds can make it difficult to determine what is “formalwear,” Gathicca has had surprising success by simply claiming anything made by Gathicca is always considered formal. While there’s no real basis for such a claim, it makes diplomatic dinners between different species so much easier, it’s just generally been accepted without challenge.

Rezort Ammo

“Fight down to your last Resort!”

Rezort brand ammo is literally resizing ammunition. It costs the same as heavy rounds, but can be loaded into weapons that accept small arms rounds, longarm rounds, scattergun shells, darts, flechettes, and heavy weapon rounds. Sadly it can’t act as petrol or batteries, but hey.

Many emergency kits include 20 Rezort rounds.

Skitter-Minders

“Need a hand? Have six!”

Skitter-Minder is a trademark associated with two linked but different business ventures. The first, and most popular, is the Skitte-Minder line of virtual personality digital assistants. Available both as independent datapad-like devices and programs you can upload to any tier 1 or higher computer, the Skitter-Minders are famously helpful and deferential-that latter a fact some actual skittermanders object to as perpetuating a stereotype. The Skitter-Minder’s main claim to fame is that each pda displays no more than six areas of concern on its front screen-one for each digital hand. While you can open more screens to see additional areas of concern, the Skitter-Minder philosophy is that really, if you need help with more than six ongoing concerns at once, you need something more than a pda. The most popular model of Skitter-Minder is a plush, furry, 6-armed datapad that doubles as a pilow.

Skitter-Minder’s second business is Critter-Manders, small stores often located in open-air shopping complexes and starports, where a living person (the “Critter”) can be hired on an hourly basis for assistance with nearly anything. The critters aren;t experts in everything, but famously are great at using InfoSpheres to find people who ARE experts in nearly any topic. Critters happily assist with everything from minor repairs to wording poetry and love-letters. They may not be the best at what they do, but if you think you need help, they can probably find it.

Ironically, there are almost no skittermanders involved in the Skitter-Minder companies.

Uberdar

“Divine Prices. Secular Requirements.”

Essentially, Uberdar makes slightly cheaper versions of everything AbadarCorp makes, at roughly the same level of quality. While many people suggest that spoofing a god’s name is a bad idea for a corporation, priests of Abadar note that as long as Uberdar doesn’t also duplicate their trade dress, the practice is fair and approved by the god of commerce.

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