Binaca

The other day, browsing through the shelves at a department store, looking for toothpaste, I came across, among the thousand variations of Colgate, a tube of Colgate Cibaca.  Over the years, I had forgotten that Colgate had indeed acquired the brand Cibaca (or what was left of it), and gawking at this tube took me back many years to my childhood.

As those who grew up in the 1960s and 70s will know, Binaca was possibly the country’s favourite toothpaste and certainly, occupied pride of place in every bathroom in our home.  It wasn’t the quality of the paste or indeed its flavour, which was – to term it most politely - mediocre.  There were two good reasons.  Reason 1: the Binaca Geet Mala, a weekly radio show of the best Hindi songs, hosted superbly on Radio Ceylon by the incomparable, the inimitable, the one-of-kind Ameen Sayani, whose energy was equally matched by his extraordinary ability to do the impossible - engage you in light conversation over radio.

Reason 2, and this reason made much more sense to a kid and is the subject of this note, was that every Binaca packet had in it, a tiny plastic animal toy figure – an elephant perhaps or a tiger, all the domestic pets, a camel or kangaroo; new ones were often introduced monthly and hence could be collected.

I must have spent hours in meditative pleasure, gazing at my collection of little plastic toys, arranging them, occasionally disfiguring them or trading them with friends, placing them on toy trains or little cars or having them perform in a circus to a hugely appreciative, almost fawning, audience.  Buying Binaca toothpaste was something my parents learnt early to outsource to their youngest son, for he would – very shamelessly, it must be added – open the packet in the shop itself, inspect the animal inside closely and then whoop in joy or reject it if it was a part of his growing collection.  Shopkeepers all over the country, I think, had resigned themselves to such behaviour, so while there’d be the odd burst of irritation, much amusement was to be had as well, with statements such as, “Beta, the first tiger you got was male.  This is female”, the subsequent laughter letting me know that they were fibbing.  Listening to Ameen Sayani on Wednesday evenings at home, of course, only confirmed what we all knew: that Binaca was the toothpaste to use after the Geet Mala was done. 

Then something happened, possibly in the late 70s, that will remain a mystery, much in the mold of Tutankhamen;  the little animal figures were dropped from the product.  Across the length and breadth of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, there must have arose a collective groan from an entire generation, to which cacophony, I certainly added my voice of displeasure.

Just why the company (Hindusthan Ciba Geigy was the villian) chose to do this is beyond my comprehension.  I can almost see some over-educated corporate Ignoramus taking the decision, supported by the Finance Controller and his Cost-and-Budgets Accountant.  The Ignoramus must have thought aloud: “We need to do something to save costs.” And, his Accountant (that Cost guy, who was born twenty two years old and hence did not know what childhood was like) would have added: “Yessir, we can save 0.04% in overall costs from removing that useless addendum, which will help us ship some more dividend back to Europe (or wherever).”

If indeed the Ignoramus did this, I hope he rots in Hell, and is boiled in the sodium lauryl sulphate that is used as toothpaste there, reportedly mixed with acetic acid.  But the ignominy for Binaca did not quite end there. As if to compound the sheer asininity of their actions, another idiot (let’s call him Ignoramus 2, for the numbers are getting larger) changed the brand name to Cibaca.  Maybe he thought he was being funny.  Maybe his parents had done the same to him.  Maybe he had commissioned a market research firm to do a study on the existing name and suggest a new one (which study must gleefully have been funded by Close Up).   The Geet Mala – horror of egregious horrors – too changed to Cibaca Geet Mala and Ameen Sayani could not quite bring himself to roll these words of his otherwise fluent tongue.  The downward slide from greatness had begun.

Colgate, of course, bought Cibaca with the intention of killing it and, it must be said, they have done a very effective job.  The toothpaste I now hold in my hand says “Colgate Cibaca 3-in-1. Fresher Breath. Stronger Teeth. Whiter Teeth.

No doubt, somewhere in the Colgate office, there is one young product manager, fresh out of his MBA who, while I was playing with the animal figures, was doing differential equations in his knickers to prepare for Kota’s entrance exam, that would help him get into IIT, that in turn would get him into an MBA, so that he could leave his engineering far behind and became a supremely incompetent product manager and come up with such 3-in-1 concotions (which makes him Ignoramus 3).  I mean, consider this: can you think of one toothpaste – just one, from the millions circling the planet – that does not say any of the above?  Is there a paste that says,

“..with the promise of pristine purple teeth…” or

“…..for fresher breath, avoid onions…..” or

“…we make your teeth whiter while you are brushing only” or

“Stronger teeth? What are you smoking? See a dentist…..” . 

Imagine the effort that has gone in to make the most pedestrian claim that you could ever see: an ad agency working late nights, brand and product manager putting up presentations to sleepy senior marketing managers, a conference to launch the new fresher-stronger-whiter, print and point-of-purchase displays dissected to perfection, all to convey a boring predictable message about a toothpaste that people bought simply because it had little plastic animals inside.