The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.walgreens.com/store/product.jsp?id=prod362383&CATID=100088&skuid=sku362384&V=G&ec=frgl_wic&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=sku362384#

Today I woke up with a little dry, tickly, kind of cough. Nothing major, but it did make me cough about every 6 minutes. So, on my way to work I thought I'd stop by the Walgreens and pick up some cough drops. I don't get sick very often and I can't remember the last time I bought cough drops, but there didn't use to be so many kinds. There was Ludens, and Halls, and the Sucrets which cost like three times the amount as the other two. Now there are somewhere around 13 billion different kinds of cough drops.

I chose Ricola Lemon Mint. On the bag it says Great Tasting, and I believed that lemon and mint might be a good combination for soothing my throat. On that account they were just so-so. But looking at the bag later on I notice that the bag contains 19 drops. Nineteen. What's the rationale for 19? Did market research figure out that 20 cough drops was just way too many or did someone from Finance say, "if we reduce the number of cough drops to nineteen, we can produce an extra bag of cough drops per 20"?

Or perhaps Steely Dan had something to do with it.