Products that never make it to the shelves

I was eating yet more Cheez-Its last night - because I finally said fuck it, fuck buying those little fucking bags from the fucking vending machine, and bought an enormous box. (Oh and btw, I'm doing fairly well on my New Year's resolution to be more profane, but falling down seriously on the bacon intake.) But anyway.

So I was looking at the back of this ginormous box, at the pictures of different flavors of Cheez-Its advertised on there. And one of them, at first glance, had an enormous green ball on it. And the first thing that popped to mind? Brussels sprouts flavored Cheez-Its! On more thorough inspection, it was a picture of Shrek on the box.

But it got me thinking about the kinds of flavored and scented products that you could come up with that would just never make it to market. It's an exercise in the ridiculous, much along the lines of naming colors of makeup, something I find endlessly entertaining.

For example:

Breakfast cereal - Breakfast cereal is essentially little crackers in a bowl with milk, no? Yet it's hard to imagine breakfast cereal as anything but generic and maybe sort of fruity or desserty and sweet. Although bacon is fantastic for breakfast, you'll never find bacon and egg flavored cereal. Nor Gouda, Gorgonzola, or Stilton - all nice with crackers, though.

Lip gloss: - This would never come in flavors such as salami, biscuit and gravy, or pork sausage. In fact, probably all meat flavors are out. Similarly, while cinnamon works nicely, seasonings such as onion or garlic are out for obvious reasons. I think rosemary and thyme would probably be weird but not gross. But basil? Questionable.

Juice - Now, juice doesn't always have to be fruit-flavored - you do see carrot, beet, and celery juice. But while cran-apple and cran-raspberry are fine, you will probably never find cran-tunip, -broccoli, -kale, or -lettuce.

Toothpaste - This is something that doesn't always come in mint. I have a Tom's of Maine fennel toothpaste, for example. But it's a product that you want to leave you tasting clean. Cream of broccoli, for one, would be a bad flavor. So would dill pickle. Similarly, beef stroganoff, candied sweet potato, and hollandaise sauce would probably all be pretty undesirable.

Deodorant - Now, this is one you can be a little freer with. Like, you could have sandalwood deodorant, while you'd never want sandalwood lip gloss. But you'd be willing to put more food smells on your lips than in your armpits. Dr. Pepper - kind of fun as a lip gloss. Totally weird in your armpits. Other possibly objectionable pit scents - hot buttered popcorn, fried chicken, or liver and onions.

I also thought about the possibility of scented/flavored nail polish, but then thought about the fact that one might encourage people to chew their nails, which would be most unhelpful. I briefly amused myself with the thought of scratch and sniff nail polish. Ha ha, get it? Ha? So anyway.

A smell I'm not sure about is fresh baked bread. That seems to be a smell everyone likes. Could you wear it as lip gloss? Would the taste be OK for toothpaste? Would it attract people to you, or give them a warm fuzzy feeling, if the smell of fresh baked bread were wafting from your armpits?

You'd think I didn't have enough to do, wouldn't you?