Photo : Joern Pollex ( Getty Images )

Kids can be reluctant to eat vegetables, forcing parents to all sorts of desperate tactics—airplane spoon with sound effects, hiding veggies in other foods—to get kids to eat them. A Belgian supermarket chain, Delhaize, tried another solution. It worked with an ad agency to “rebrand” veggies with kid-approved names like “orange rockets” (carrots) and “dragon teeth” (endives). The new names appeared on packaging, signs, and even receipts. Ad Age reports kids and their parents were into the Magic Veggies campaign, leading to a 151 percent increase in sales in the first two weeks.


Kids could use a website to create their own names for veggies other than the 12 that are a part of the initial campaign; they came up with “giant’s nose” (butternut squash), “monster eyes” (rutabaga), and “witch’s broom” (leeks). Cute, but The Takeout staff thought we could do better:

Sideshow Bob flowers (broccoli)

Cheeto logs (carrots)

Garden Skittles (peas)

Butter harmonica (corn)

Kermit Soccer Balls (Brussels sprouts)

Magic pee purplers (beets)

We’re pretty damn proud of ourselves, and are confident that no kid could say no to the prospect of eating something that would make their pee magically change colors. Of course, if all these creative names fail, there’s the kid-tested approach my boyfriend took with his nephew: Tell him that his favorite dinosaur (brachiosaurus) was an herbivore. Who wouldn’t want to eat like their favorite dinosaur?