SimCity 5 Update: EA Partners With Toothpaste For New DLC Promotion

Electronic Arts has revealed its latest SimCity promotion. This time, the company is offering in-game items at the low, low price of toothpaste.

Anyone who purchases specially marked Crest or Oral-B products will receive their choice of a "SimCity Attractions Set," in-game money for the Facebook game The Sims Social, or a $5 off anything Origin coupon.

The SimCity Attractions Set will include the Giant Garden Gnome, Dolly the Dinosaur, Llary the Llama, MaxisMan Statue, and the World's Largest Ball of Twine. Each of these placements adds overall happiness to a player's city, and can also be used as a tourist attraction. What any of those have to do with toothpaste is a mystery to me.

Those who prefer to play their games in a browser can instead redeem the code for premium cash in The Sims Social. That option is particularly strange though considering it was just announced that the game will be closing in June. I'm guessing you should plan on spending it pretty quickly.

This, of course, is not the first, and certainly won't be the last, tie-in promotion for EA and Maxis's SimCity. The first bit of product placement was last month's Nissan Leaf charging station, a little piece of utopia that created free happiness, required no water or power, created no waste, and even added little branded Nissan cars to the player's city.

While that was certainly not a transparent way to sell an in-game advertisement, at least it was free and made a bit of sense being in a city building game. On the other hand, promoting toothpaste with giant garden gnomes just seems a bit... off.

In any case, the promotion will only last for a limited amount of time, so if you were hoping to scoop up that five item set, head on over to your nearest store and grab some specially marked Crest or Oral-B toothpaste.

Codes are redeemable at this page.