East Coast-West Coast rivalry

Maybe this is a good time to go over one of the other peculiarities of living here, after so many years of East Coast citizenhood: the brand-name changes. What you know as Kroger, we know as the far more comical King Soopers. Same store -- I still even use my old Kroger card, and they carry the Big K brands -- but a much sillier name. (My mother-in-law can't keep it straight. She calls it Super Bob. And when it annoys me, I call it King Stoopers.) You call that ice cream Edy's, but we call it Dreyer's (or "Breyer's with a 'D'" -- why would they pick a name so close to another brand?). And Hellmann's mayonnaise becomes Best Foods.

Why, I ask you? Why? Any clues? It's really not that big a deal to drive over the Mississippi. Heck, if you live in O'Fallon, Illinois and work in St. Louis, you do it every single day. I wonder if the citizens of O'Fallon compare Edy's and Dreyer's, looking for differences. The mind boggles.