I sweat a lot. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT. I sweat enough that deodorant is a very big deal to me. Anti-perspirant doesn’t stop me. At all. What it does do is make me not smell as much. I can live with that. What I’ve had problems living with is the fact that I ruin shirts with my deodorant impregnated sweat. I’ve hopped around to various types; normal stick, gels, roll-on, etc.1 After a good 10 years of dedicated deodorant experimentation, I finally settled on plain old Ban roll-on, Regular or Powder Fresh. It looks like this:
I went to the store today to get a new stick. I couldn’t find it. The thought running through my head was, “How the fuck could this enormous grocery store not carry Ban deodorant?” I looked and looked and then finally saw this on the shelf:
Now, we get to the meat of this post. Why the redesign? What on God’s green Earth motivated the odor-free people at Ban to change the color on a stick of deodorant? And why this awful yellowish-green?
1 No sprays for me.
That is the color of Mother Gaia.
Bear, have you tried tieing chunks of deodorant like LL Cool J did/does? I think he might have tied that crystal rock stuff up there.
Funny thing is that I’m pretty sure anti-perperant makes me sweat. I’m serious and I’ve hear of this happening to other people. I distinctly remember having sweet drip down my from under-arms during class. So now I just throw some musk under there and call it good.
But, I know the feeling of not being able to find something in the store when it should be there. I had the damnedest time finding the frozen burritos in the Shoppers Food Warehouse which happens to have predominantly Hispanic clients.
how odd…that yellowish hue reminds me of the color of sweat that people are trying to prevent from getting on their shirts, which is why most deodorants/antiperspirant companies prefer the “fresh-as-a-daisy-just-washed-reminds-us-of-like-baby-powder” white. however, not all do. for example, Degree, my brand of choice, is a cool, minty green color. not Tic-Tac mint green, but the color of the actual mint leaf.
but the important thing is that you’ve found your favorite deodorant/antiperspirant. that’s a big deal! you should throw yourself a party to celebrate.
I’m actually suprised it took this long for them to re-design it. In my experience companies these days seem to re-design their packaging (if not the actual contents) every year or two.
It’s a problem I always run into when I want shampoo that just frickin’ cleans my hair! I used to get this relatively transparent shampoo just called “Clean Hair Shampoo”, put out by Suave. Intermittantly they would stop selling this stuff. Now I can’t find it anywhere. All the Suave shampoos these days either have some sort of fruity scent or special properties like Hydrating or Scalp Descaling and such.
I suspect that in all these cases this isn’t just to draw people in with a “New! Better!” message, but also to avoid people mentally associating the product with something they’ve seen in their grandparent’s bathroom for the past 10 years.
Green is a good color (has rugged outdoorsy and environmental conscious connotations), but gotta agree with megan here: that color green is kinda gross, also on the snotty side. A couple shades less yellow and I think they’d have hit pay dirt.
Isn’t that “crystal rock” stuff what hunters use to mask their scent so the deer don’t smell them comming?
new packaging isn’t enough.. have you seen the new packages of Doritos (specifically the Nacho Cheesier flavored)? apparently, Frito-Lay is claiming that Doritos are “NOW BETTER TASTING!” better tasting??? is Frito-Lay admitting that Doritos sucked?
If they change it they almost have to say it’s for the better, just to convince you that you’ll like it even more. Gives the illusion of constant improvement.
Sort of like economic growth. No U.S. presidential cadidate can promise to keep the the economy the same as it is if they really hope to win, even if the economy is currently doing well. They all have to come out in favor of increased economic growth.
Besides, it’s not Doritos that sucked. It’s those Cheetos that make you have to dig debris from between your teeth every time you eat a mouthful.