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.
