Stopping in to Walgreens to pick up a prescription today, I noticed something new on the counter…the Yucky Medicine wheel. This is one of those devices that you turn to find out information about each of probably 50 or more medications listed on the outside of the wheel. In this case, as you turn the wheel, it displays the Yuckiness Factor for each liquid medication in terms of taste.

The three choices in taste ratings (complete with emoticon-type icons) are:

• Yucky tasting
• More yucky
• Most yuckiest

For each medication, there is a second round of displays that indicates what additional flavorings are available to be added to the medication to make it more palatable (i.e., some are available in cherry and lemon, others in strawberry or pineapple, etc.).

Now we all know that there is no such thing as a good tasting liquid medicine–blechh! The folks @ Walgreens and the flavoring company have embraced this fact and turned it into a marketing tool. Instead of official-sounding, rational taste rankings like mild or moderately offensive, they go right to yucky and more yucky. Who can argue with that?

The goal is to convince patients and their parents to spend a few dollars extra to have a pleasant tasting flavoring added to their liquid medicine. (Medicinal flavorings are usually not covered by medical insurance, but paid for out of pocket.) What’s a couple of dollars when you face the choice of feeding your child 10 days of most yuckiest medicine, three times a day?

BTW, the pharmacist told me that many adults take liquid medicines and they too try to avoid the yucky factor. So this marketing tactic works for adults as well as kids.

Great marketing, Walgreens. Makes you almost want to raise a medicine  stopper and say cheers! Well, ALMOST.