Lickable Wallpaper

Willy Wonka would be proud. When Adnan Aziz saw people licking orange-flavoured wallpaper in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it gave him the idea for a novel form of advertising.

Together with Jay Minkoff, a "serial entrepreneur," he set up First Flavor, a company that makes edible film strips that allow consumers to sample the flavours of foods, drinks and other products.

So far First Flavor has distributed strips that taste of grape juice, acai-berry juice, lime-spiked rum, and baking-soda toothpaste in shops and magazines and via direct-mail campaigns.

Just as retailers stuff newspapers with coupons and sales promotions, First Flavor wants to get food and drink companies to attach a sealed pouch, containing a flavour sample, to front-page newspaper advertisements for their products. Consumers can then take them for a "taste drive," puns Minkoff.

First Flavor has already run magazine-based campaigns, so edible ads in newspapers are an obvious next step.

First Flavor and US Ink think the decline in newspaper advertising revenue, as a result of the recession and the rise of the Internet, provides an opportunity.

While Internet advertisements can do all sorts of things, so far there is no way to transmit tastes electronically.

Edible ads would allow newspapers to offer something the Internet cannot match.