Naming is the last thing that happens here, not the first. A product doesn't get a name until it works—until it has survived the bench, the testing, and a few rooms full of curious six-year-olds. Only then do we let ourselves have a little fun with what to call it.
And when it's time to have that fun, we have—influences. Two of them, specifically, that we are not the least bit embarrassed about. Mostly.
One part Binford 6100
We grew up on Home Improvement, the show where it seemed like every single tool Tim Taylor reached for carried the exact same badge—the Binford 6100—as if one glorious model number covered the entire catalogue. That was the whole running joke, and it was hilarious: it didn't matter what the tool actually did, it was always the 6100.
That's the spirit behind our 9000. It does not mean there were 8,999 hatchers before it. It means the thing is, in the finest Binford tradition, a little over-built—and quietly proud of it.
One part ominous megacorp
We are also lifelong fans of the Alien films, where every airlock, crate, and cargo manifest is stamped with the same omnipresent company—Weyland-Yutani, the corporation at the centre of everything (the result of a merger, the lore tells us). There is something irresistible about a single fictional company quietly running the entire universe. Naming a humble classroom incubator as though it had rolled off a galactic supply line made us laugh, so we leaned all the way in.
The subtitle that didn't survive
For a while, the product had a subtitle. Weyland-Yutani's company motto is "Building Better Worlds." Ours was going to be a small, affectionate riff on it:
We loved it. We really did. But in the late hours before going to market, we cut it—partly because, the truth be told, Alien is a far too risqué reference for an elementary classroom, and a six-year-old's incubator does not need a chestburster association following it around.
What stuck
What survived was the part that actually describes the thing: it hatches multiple species, automatically, and it's named like it could survive re-entry. Multi Hatch 9000. It stuck, and here we are.
The names we keep are the ones that are honest about what the product does—with just enough personality to make us smile when we see them on the invoice. If you'd like to meet the 9000 in person, the Multi Hatch 9000 is available now. No subtitle required.