Jingle Jingle

What’s the worst Indian advertising jingle?
Vajradanti Vajradanti Vicco Vajradanti
[a couple of lines about how its herbal ingredients give complete protection]
Vicco Vajradanti! Vicco Vajradanti!

The product is a toothpaste. Vicco is the manufacturer, and Vajradanti means ‘that which makes teeth as strong as a thunderbolt.’ (‘Vajra’ is a thunderbolt; it’s also a religious symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism; ‘dant’ is from the same Indo-Aryan root as ‘dental’.)

It’s an old-fashioned product, and an old-fashioned jingle, from the days when someone would doodle for awhile on a keyboard – I imagine one of those small harmoniums that comes in a box – until he found a sequence of notes that sounded complete. Then just keep repeating the name of the product, and that’s it.

It slid into my head last night, and when my mind switched on this morning, before I had even opened my eyes, there it still was. It made me realise why advertising tunelets are called ‘jingles,’ because it is jingling like a cluster of unmelodious bells in my brain. Can someone remove it now, please?

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