Deodorant Ice Cream Chindogu

As part of a creative drama class project, I created ice cream chindogus for the class out of ordinary deodorant sticks.

Chindogu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the surface, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. – Wikipedia

Putting the ice cream in a deodorant stick would make it easier for people to eat their ice cream, as it would slide up the deodorant stick, but is impractical because of the social implications of eating deodorant in public. With this chindogu, I also had the chance to remix two existing products, ice cream and deodorant, in a new way that nobody had tried before. I immediately started researching deodorant stick schematics to understand how the idea could work on a technical level. After sketching a couple mockups of the product, I began asking various ice cream shops what frozen treat would be best for the project and got started on creating the product.

I began by pulling apart the original deodorant sticks.

I separated the mechanical pieces from the deodorant for reuse in the final piece.

Each part had to be boiled to remove all remaining deodorant from the enclosure, making my home smell like “Ocean Surf” deodorant for days.

Lemon and baking soda was then used to sterilize the sticks even further. They were then reboiled multiple times.

Adobe Illustrator was used to reproduce the deodorant’s logo, with customized text. I wanted to make the design almost indistinguishable from Speed Stick’s original branding so it would still trick people into thinking I was eating deodorant. I changed the large “Speed Stick” text to “Ice Cream” and changed the flavour from “Ocean Surf” to “Vanilla”. On the back of the product I also changed the usage description to Apply once to mouth only. CAUTION: Do not use on broken skin. Discontinue if rash or irritation occurs. Keep in reach of children. I then also changed the ingredients of the deodorant to the ingredients of the ice cream sandwich. Overall I feel the end result turned out incredibly well, with only minor differences between the two.

The labels were then printed on transparent sticker paper and carefully placed on each container.

Great Value Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches from Walmart were the perfect fit for the project.

The cookie part of the sandwiches were pulled off.

The ice cream bars from the sandwiches were then pushed into the deodorant containers. I let them freeze for a week before serving them to the class.

Although I designed this piece to be somewhat of a gag-product, it is a project I am incredibly proud of.  This project reminded me that creativity doesn’t always have to have a purpose, and making something for the sake of “fun” is something that I would like to do more of. In the future, I plan to set aside more of my personal time to create something as unique as this.