THE REAL MCCOY

My friend couldn't decide which brand of potato chips to buy at Cold Storage so she asked me for my opinion and i jokingly pointed at the brand below and said, "well, you should definitely buy the real mccoy shouldn't you!!" and she looked at me and said "nice meh? i've never heard of that brand before!".

My expression from :D turned to -_-".


So, it is safe to say that the Real McCoy though a brand of potato chips remained only a brand of potato chips for my friend. She probably doesn't know the real meaning of 'the real mccoy' so she wasn't lexically primed and hence, unaware of the pun and motivation in naming the brand such.

The meaning of 'The real McCoy" as wikipedia explains:

"The real McCoy" is an idiom used throughout much of the English-speaking world to mean "the real thing" or "the genuine article" e.g., "he's the real McCoy". It is a corruption of the Scots "The real MacKay", first recorded in 1856 as: "A drappie o’ the real MacKay," (A drop of the real MacKay), and this is widely accepted as the origin.^[1][2][3]

How it came to be "McCoy" is unclear – it is first recorded in this form in the US in 1908^[4] – and the phrase is the subject of numerous fanciful folk etymologies.