Toothpaste --- Out of Control!

Gone into a supermarket to purchase toothpaste lately? Good luck. If you know your brand and type you might get out of the dental products aisle in less than 10 minutes. Even if you do know your brand and type, it’s a devilish task to find it. Colgate alone has more than 40 variations….some whiten, some don’t, some protect enamel, some don’t, some have baking soda and peroxide, some don’t, some have tartar protection, some don’t. Then there’s the whole flavor spectrum to deal with --- crystal mint, clean mint, cool mint, original (what the hell is that?) etc. Do you favor gel or paste? And let’s not get started on the package sizes.

Something has gone wrong with toothpaste merchandising, that’s obvious. It should not be that hard to choose a brand and type. The manufacturers (all of them, Crest, Colgate, Arm and Hammer, etc.) all play the game and the goal is to totally bewilder the consumer, and on that front, they have achieved total victory. According to some estimates there are around 350 distinct types and sizes of toothpaste available for retail sale.

Pricing too is insane. A 4.5 ounce tube can cost as much as 6 ounce tube and you have this suspicion that toothpaste has a lot in common with lipstick. It’s cheap to produce and expensive to market. Supposedly, Colgate and Crest control 70% of the market but they spend millions on advertising non-stop to hold on to that brand loyalty. So the ingredients and packaging may account for 10% of the costs with the rest going to marketing. As I said, it may be a lot like lipstick.

Dentists will tell you to just make sure it has the ADA seal and contains fluoride to help prevent decay and subsequent cavities. Some take it a step further and tell you to stay away from whitening products that they deem not very beneficial, borderline harmful.

My latest idea is to take a photo of the toothpaste package at home with my smartphone so that I can try to find the same package on the shelf. It beats coming home with a new brand/type that you did not intend to purchase. Supposedly, the manufacturers know that they have too many brand variations and they are trying to scale back the options to curtail some of the sensory overload that consumers get in the toothpaste aisle. I haven’t seen any improvement at our grocery store, but I can only hope that it gets easier. Otherwise I’m considering converting to the chew stick. It’s cheap, you don’t need toothpaste, and it combats bad breath. Oh yeah, and you can grow your own chew stick tree and never visit the toothpaste aisle again.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.