It’s often a good idea to experiment with new foods. When you sample different tastes, you will likely find some which are completely unappealing – but you’ll also discover new favorites as well.
It’s also a good idea to provide variants on medicinal product flavors, as research develops them. While some prefer the harsh taste of the original Listerine, for example, the various mint varieties they’ve produced now greatly outpace the original in sales.
That said, some new flavors probably aren’t necessary. Perhaps the place where this becomes most apparent is the toothpaste aisle. The entire goal of toothpaste is to clean your teeth and leave your mouth feeling refreshed. Mint has shown to be an excellent choice for that.
Not so successful is bacon-flavored toothpaste. Among the most famous of all bad toothpaste ideas, there are a variety of home videos of people on Youtube and Facebook featuring people trying it for the first time. It’s toothpaste. It tastes like bacon. While there is no denying that bacon is delicious, the question should be “is that the flavor I associate with a clean mouth?” The answer is… no. It’s the flavor that’s associated with having little bits of delicious meat and fats lingering in your saliva. Just not a good idea.
Another bad idea is chocolate-flavored toothpaste. Yes, it’s designed by a dental professional and yes, it’s meant to inspire kids to want to brush their teeth. It’s a bad idea to get kids to associate “chocolate” with the flavor of having a clean mouth and a worse idea for parents to be unable to determine if their child’s breath means they just brushed or they’ve been sneaking Hershey’s kisses before bedtime.
Chocolate would seem to be the worst possible option for a kid’s toothpaste based purely on those standards. It’s not, though. Proving that by going out of business (at least for American markets) was cola-flavored toothpaste. Because if it’s not enough to encourage kids to associate sweets with a clean mouth, someone had to encourage them to want caffeinated sweets. That’s always a brilliant combination for a young child.
Asian markets are where some of the most unusual toothpastes, like the cola, reside… but to be fair, different cultures may have different views of what constitutes a “clean mouth” feeling. That would probably explain, for example, pumpkin pudding toothpaste from Japane.
Lest you think that the craze for weird toothpaste flavors is restricted to the modern age, though, I must present an idea from the 1950s… whiskey-flavored toothpaste. It came in scotch, rye and bourbon flavors, and achieved those flavors by utilizing the clever trick of blending the alcohol with the cleaning elements. The paste itself was about six proof, or about half as intoxicating as drinking a beer, should someone decide to chug a tube. If there was ever a more certain way to ensure a drunk driving test during a traffic stop than brushing with whiskey, I cannot imagine what it was.
Question of the night: What’s your favorite Asian food?
