Binaca

Some years ago, while browsing through the shelves at a department store looking for toothpaste in a sort of confused daze because of the thousand mindless permutations of flavoured foam, I came across a tube of Colgate Cibaca.  I had forgotten that Colgate had acquired the brand Cibaca (or what was left of it), and, gawking at this unprepossessing tube,  I thought of my childhood.

So would you have, had you grown up in the 1960s and 70s: Binaca was possibly the country’s favourite toothpaste and occupied pride of place in every bath in our home.  It wasn’t the quality of the paste, which was probably ordinary.  It wasn't even the flavour - terming the Binaca taste-in-mouth a flavour would be a flattering compliment as it was, in all likelihood, some mint oil  blended into a repelling green paste and stuffed into a tube.  

No, none of that.  There were two good reasons why Binaca rocked.  

Reason 1: the Binaca Geet Mala, a weekly radio show of the best Hindi songs, hosted on Radio Ceylon by the incomparable, the inimitable, the one-of-kind Ameen Sayani, whose enthusiasm and language was only matched by his extraordinary ability to do the impossible - engage you in light conversation over radio.  But more of this perhaps in a later post.

Reason 2, and this reason made much more sense to a kid and is the subject of this note, was that every Binaca carton with toothpaste carried a tiny plastic animal toy figurine – an elephant perhaps or a tiger or tortoise or a rhino, 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, 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, imaginary audience.  Buying Binaca toothpaste was something my parents learnt early to outsource to their youngest son in the larger interest of domestic peace and internal stability, 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 in ill-concealed annoyance if it was a part of his collection.  Shopkeepers all over the country had, no doubt, 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.  

Then something happened, possibly in the late 70s, that will remain a mystery, much in the mold of Tutankhamen or why the Homo erectus died out:  the little animal figurines were dropped from the product.  Across the length and breadth of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, there must have arisen a collective groan from an entire generation, to which cacophony, I added my robust voice of displeasure.

Just why the company (Hindusthan Ciba Geigy was the despicable villian) chose to do this is beyond my comprehension (and possibly beyond theirs to).  I can almost see some ill-educated, misanthropic, deprived corporate Ignoramus - with about as much capability for emotion as a dining table - taking the decision, supported by the Finance Controller and other anti-social elements that were determined to ruin civilized society.  The Ignoramus must have thought aloud: “We need to do something to save costs.” And, his Financial Controller (who was born twenty-two years old at birth 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 held in my hand said “Colgate Cibaca 3-in-1. Fresher Breath. Stronger Teeth. Whiter Teeth.

No doubt, somewhere in the Colgate office, there is one 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, for example, “Stronger teeth? What are you smoking? See a dentist…..” . 

Imagine the effort that has gone in to make the most pedestrian, utterly banal, profoundly didatic, insanely boring, needlessly verbose claim that you could ever see: an ad agency working late nights, brand and product manager putting up presentations to sleepy senior marketing managers none of whom played with Binaca toys, damn them, a conference to launch the new fresher-stronger-whiter lousy damp story about a toothpaste that masses of kids had bought for their parents simply because it had little plastic animals inside.