There’s no science to coming up with a good comic idea, even though we’ve pushed the idea of a magical formula in the past. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and this week’s comic was inspired by my wife’s toothpaste tube of all things. When your toothpaste promises it will give you 25% stronger enamel, how can you refuse? Then I dug through our pantry and realized that this kind of on-product advertising was pretty common. I’m not talking about just health conscious advertising because everything advertises low calories, fat-free, no suger, etc. I’m talking about other benefits, like my cereal that says it improves attentiveness by 20%, or my Nesquik that says it helps build strong bones. For an RPG fan, those stat improvements are too much to resist!

Taking Tim’s idea about putting exciting labels on products led to the idea of creating a standardized labeling system on foods targeted towards kids. It would replace the boring “nutrition facts” on the back (no kid wants to look at that) and provide incentive as to why they would want to eat something. Think about it, kids will do the most boring thing over and over again in a video game just to let their character gain stats in a certain area, so why not apply the same logic to Spinach?