I was watching a すしらーめん 【りく】 video and they consistently spelled Häagen-Dazs as ハー○ンダッツ and I was wondering if it was to make a joke that it sounds like a taboo word or something so they unnecessarily censored it. The proper brand is ハーゲンダッツ so I’m guessing the ○ is not part of some weird faux-Scandinavian transliteration scheme.
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In this context it’s used to censor word. Much like the use of * in english. Eg. F*ck
Im guessing it’s either to avoid legal problem with Haagen Daz or just some gag for the vid.
Defamation laws are really strict in Japan, so names of well-known things tend to be censored this way just to cover their backs, so they can say “We did not explicitly name 〇〇.” This still holds up when they aren’t saying anything bad about the thing in question. They just don’t want any legal problems whatsoever, but they still wanna talk about that one thing.
In addition to censoring brand names, you’ll see it used for censoring vulgar or sexual words.
It’s to avoid having it turn up in searches.