The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2019
Lenganling (冷酸灵) x Xiaolongkan brew hotpot toothpaste — 4,000 sets sold out in half a day
Lenganling collabs with hotpot chain Xiaolongkan on three-spice-level toothpaste — 4,000 sets gone in half a day, Weibo hot search #3, 18x resale markup
Lenganling (冷酸灵) · Xiaolongkan (小龙坎)
What it had to solve
Lenganling, the anti-sensitivity toothpaste whose slogan promises 'eat hot and cold as you like', was aging against Colgate, Crest and Darlie; Xiaolongkan rode the spicy-food boom. A playful 'national-chic' crossover could pull both brands into the conversation.
How it works
On April 30, 2019, Lenganling (冷酸灵) — the value anti-sensitivity toothpaste famous for '冷热酸甜，想吃就吃' ('eat anything hot, cold, sweet or sour') — and hotpot chain Xiaolongkan (小龙坎) launched a three-tube 'hotpot toothpaste' set. The flavors mirrored a hotpot menu: standard medium spicy, mild 'Sichuan-Chongqing' spicy, and a legendary extreme heat, with visible chili particles in the gel.
The launch was engineered for sharing: Tmall pre-sale made the first 4,000 sets sell out in half a day; street-test videos captured people's reactions; phone-case merch extended the gag; and the set returned on May 10 for Tmall's 'China Brand Day', where 200 pieces sold out in 11 seconds. Dentists were quoted warning sensitive gums, which only added to the news cycle.
The campaign put an 80-year-old heritage brand back in young people's sights: it hit #3 on Weibo's hot search, and scarcity pushed secondhand prices to 5–6x retail (one listing at 18x). The parent company opened three extra production lines ahead of Tmall's 618 and rushed a follow-up 'hotpot companion' toothpaste, with analysts framing the whole episode as a textbook case of turning a product into social currency.
Why it lands
- Toothpaste and hotpot are opposites, so the combination itself is the news — it breaks a fixed category expectation before a single ad runs.
- Scarcity (a limited 4,000 sets) turned the product into a collectible, and resale at 5–18x gave the story a second, third and fourth news cycle.
- The three heat levels mirror how Chinese people actually order hotpot, making the gag participatory — everyone has an opinion on which level is bravest.
- For both brands it was a match of opposites: Lenganling's 'eat hot and cold as you like' promise met Xiaolongkan's spicy-food fame, so the collab felt inevitable, not random.
What it did
The 4,000-set first batch sold out in half a day and hit #3 on Weibo hot search; a 200-set relaunch on May 10 vanished in 11 seconds; secondhand resale ran 5–6x (one listing at 18x), and the brand rushed three new production lines ahead of Tmall's 618.
What you can take
For an aging brand, a product that literalizes a national obsession is its own campaign: the absurdity generates reviews, resale mania and free press, but heat only transfers if the product ships.
Since then
The toothpaste stayed a limited product — as 界面新闻 put it, 'the product is the marketing' — and the real payoff was attention, not a new line. Lenganling used the momentum for more national-chic moves and new-flavor series, and the campaign became the signature example of 2019's 'reversal crossover' wave among heritage brands, alongside RIO x Six God's mosquito-water cocktail and Luzhou Laojiao's perfume. Analysts have since cited it as a model of product-led social currency.
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