Growing years with Binaca

This post is about my association with Binaca, as a brand rather than a mere toothpaste. Today’s generation, if asked to name a toothpaste would rattle off Colgate, Pepsodent, Close-up, Pepsodyne and of course Baba’s Patanjali.

Binaca? A shrug of the shoulders and a pout of the lips maybe. In the late sixties and seventies what were the toothpaste options we had? Of course, the Big Red Colgate was around, even at that time. Then we had the choice of Forhans ( the toothpaste created by a dentist, said their tag-line), Kolynos and later came that classic toothpaste, white in color but with a red streak in the middle, a Hindustan Lever product – Signal, it was called.

For me as a child, it was always the yellow and green packaging of Binaca which later turned to blue with Binaca Fluoride. Why? The toothpaste packing stated ‘ Charm inside’ and sure enough beside the toothpaste tube was a miniature animal or bird — initially made of wood, later it was plastic. Colorful aardvarks, armadillos, rhinos, snails,camels, giraffes, different dog breeds like corgi, dachshund,chow-chow and I also recall transparent unicorns. It was great fun collecting these and exchanging with friends and also getting to know different animals many of which we would never have seen.

Binaca perhaps realised that children could be influencers as far as purchases of their toothpaste went and hence charmed this segment through their charms.

Years were rolling by and I had a collection of over 100 animals, birds and reptiles, courtesy Binaca toothpaste. Did I now have the same passion for these small charms? Not really, but still was proud of my collection. They were kept in a small plastic container in one of the shelves and once before Diwali, they got stolen by one of the persons engaged for cleaning. Was quite upset as years of hard work had come to nought and I felt my childhood love had been wrenched away from me.

Late seventies now —  Binaca had changed over the years. They introduced a new toothpaste called Binaca Top.

My love for Binaca continued. Now I was into Hindi Film songs  and the barometer of a song’s popularity those days was about its ranking on Binaca Geet Mala. My friends and I would wait eagerly for 8 PM on Wednesdays when this programme would go on air on Radio Ceylon ( till 1972 Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon) and discuss the rankings the following day in school. The soothing, patronising yet commanding voice of Ameen Sayani would hold us enthralled. “Bhaiyon aur behnon”, he would start with and take us through the rankings of the popular songs from Hindi films, their rankings based on “recordon ki bikhri aur shrota sanghon ke rai”. How can I forget the ” Sartaj geet ka bugle”? A popular song after a fixed number of weeks would be retired from the programme with this bugle. In between Ameen Sayani would extol the virtues of Binaca toothpaste too. The annual rankings on Binaca Geet Mala was a big thing and I am told, Bollywood used to be glued in on this. Some of the Number 1 songs over the years I started listening to this programme include, ” Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein”, ” Koi patthar se na maare mere dewaane ko”, ” Ankhiyon ke jharokon se”, ” Dafliwale dafli baja”and ” Khaike paan Banarswala“.

With the remorseless advancement of television, radio was fast losing ground and Binaca Geet Mala too started to wane. There were so many programmes on TV ranking film songs with the advantage being both audio and video, something poor Ameen Sayani did not have. A half-hearted attempt was made to resurrect Cibaca Geet Mala ( Yes, Binaca had become Cibaca & Ciba Geigy had become Hindusthan Ciba Geigy) with Ameen Sayani on TV but it was a failure.

As a brand, Binaca is not there anymore, but the childhood memories remain. Thank you Binaca for all the joys you gave in my growing years.