adventures with new toothpaste - a story with pictures

For whatever reason, I have always been partial to Aquafresh toothpaste. My brand loyalty is so strong that other brands of toothpaste literally scare me. Unless there is some huge emergency, I only brush my teeth with Aquafresh brand toothpaste. [A huge emergency would probably have to include not brushing my teeth for 3 days and only having Colgate or something else available. Confession: sometimes when I drink too much and end up staying at a friend's house, I do not brush my teeth. Even if I brought the requisite supplies! There, now you know.] There's something about the red, white, and green paste that is comforting. I treat my tubes of paste right, too...as directed for best results, I only squeeze from the bottom. See this picture? This is a huge no-no with me. If my tube of toothpaste looks like that, it is only because someone else has used it and in the process was disrespectful to the glorious paste.

Now you that you know about my finicky brushing habits, I can tell you about my adventures in trying a new toothpaste. It's still part of the Aquafresh line ot toothpastes, but new to me. I decided to try the Extreme Clean EmpowerMint toothpase, now with whitening! I was unimpressed with the fancy packaging which had too much orange, but I wanted something with whitening and it was all I could find. Take a deep breath. Here we go.

After opening the overly sophisticated box, I was not at all surprised to find the silver, space-age looking tube of paste. They're pulling out all the stops here! And there is no comfort in the red, green, and white stripes. In fact, there is no red at all. I was worried but moved onward. I removed the cap, and my worst fears became realized: the paste was ORANGE AND WHITE AND HAD NO RED OR GREEN WHATSOEVER. As you can see, I was wary of this unwelcome change. The fact that it now matched my toothbrush did nothing to help.

There was still a job to be done - this teeth brushing thing. I put the paste on my tongue as I usually do (to smash it into the bristles so it doesn't lose fall off the brush), and NOOO! It tastes like dentist toothpaste! I am even going so far as to post this horribly unattractive picture of me to show my disgust. I put up with the taste and started brushing anyway, and it started this weird foaming stuff. According to the box:

Its dynamic foaming action seeks out hard to reach places - even the back of your tongue - fighting the sources of bad breath.

I can tell you that this is bullshit. There is no way this magical foam is going to crawl to the back of my tongue without some assistance from yours truly.

I managed to finish brushing with only a little gagging. I then remembered a tip my friend told me once - certain toothpastes are ADA approved and have a little symbol on them. I knew that my beloved red and green Aquafresh was, and I even dug an old tube out of the trash to confirm it. [Aww, just look at it - it's so cute and unpretentious. Sigh.] I checked all over the new fancy tube, and there were no ADA markings of any kind. Maybe it's too new to get approval, but this pretty much settled it for me: Extreme Clean "EmpowerMint" toothpaste SUCKS. But I'll probably still use it until I can finish this blasted tube.