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Written by ASAP
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Wednesday, 16 August 2006 |
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Not long ago, life was more tranquil. We drank our Coke and our Pepsi, sucked on our butter rum Life Savers and wintergreen Velamints, brushed our teeth with Crest or Colgate, deodorized our underarms with Mennen Speed Stick or Right Guard or Secret.
Lately, though, as the culture speeds up, prosaic events like the morning routine and the snack break seem to be getting more ... aggressive.
Now, your energy drink might well be FULL THROTTLE. Your cinnamon gum, against a field of exploding crystals, must be UNLEASHED. You have to brace yourself for the BERRY BLAST from your Slim-Carb energy bar. We brush our teeth with Crest CINNAMON RUSH and freshen our breath with Certs GLACIAL BREEZE.
Browse the toiletry aisle and it gets even more intense. A guy who wants to keep himself from reeking has many choices. These are from Speed Stick and Right Guard alone: XTREME. OVERDRIVE. ADRENALINE. FRESH RUSH. ICY SURGE. ACCELERATE. CLEAN IMPACT.
Our daily routines are turning into Steven Seagal movies. Forget about terrorists turning everyday toiletries into weapons; we’re practically there on our own.
Gone forever are the days when peppermints were nothing more than curiously strong and the phrase “take Aim against cavities” was as munitions-heavy as it got.
This is hardly an unexpected development in our superlative-happy culture. You knew we were headed for trouble when “new and improved” gave way to “zesty,” “ultimate” and their brethren. A favorite, which emerged in the snack-food wars of the 1990s, was “sizzling new packaging — same great taste.”
That wasn’t enough, though. To stand out in the increasingly competitive supermarket aisles of a tabloid culture, brands had to go further. Bold, neon-colored fonts emerged. Metallic labeling shone from the shelves. Of course evocations of explosions, high-speed chases and other aggressive acts were the next natural step. No longer could you just smell good or chow down, you had to do it in a snowboarding-skydiving-stock-car-racing kind of way.
That trajectory deposits us right here in 2006, where the Pepperidge Farm pizza-flavored goldfish crackers we grew up with are FLAVOR-BLASTED. Rold Gold offers pretzels called ZESTY RANCH FLAVOR RUSH PIECES. “High-intensity mints” is actually a market category. And that cinnamon gum? Here’s its full name: ICE BREAKERS ULTIMATE MOUTH FRESHENING UNLEASHED CINNAFUSION. The succinctness of Big Red is so Reagan administration.
You can’t help but wonder: Where do we go from here? Can an anti-perspirant named NUCLEAR MELTDOWN or a sports drink called SEVERE BEATING be that far away? Pretty soon, someone’s going to need a Life Saver. And not butter rum, either. | Only registered users can write comments.
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