tide pods are absolutely an aperture science invention. blue, orange, and white color scheme? pleasing rounded plastic aesthetic? look tasty but will burn your throat and kill you? i bet they were cave johnson’s attempt at creating delicious snack packs
“Cave Johnson here,
So I have some bad news and some good news, the bad news is those Aperture Science confectionaries we just spent millions of dollars making are absolutely toxic, they will rupture your insides immediately upon ingesting them. The good news is we’ve found they’re great for taking stains out of clothes.”
The best part of this post is that this actually legit happened in-universe with the repulsion gel; Aperture tried to invent a dietary pudding substitute, which naturally didn’t turn out well - it caused any food that was ingested afterwards to bounce off the stomach and back out the mouth