International Toothpaste Museum

Made By Dentists is a small company - as they say , "Our little office in Solana Beach, California is run by our two founding dentists and a small crew of surfers, skaters, artists, nerds, workaholics and creatives trying to build an authentic brand that changes the way our community thinks about oral health and how it affects our daily lives." I haven't reviewed very many kids' toothpastes... the last review was almost ten years ago . The biggest reason I haven't reviewed many is that I'm not fond of the typical kids' flavors - and nearly every toothpaste in The Museum is consumed. So, let's start with the flavor. I was hard-pressed to describe what this toothpaste tastes like, so I asked my resident assistant, Heather, what she thought. She described it as bubble-gummy. Then she went on to say that she didn’t like it. But anything that gets kids excited about brushing their teeth is good. Bubble gum? If it's good for your teeth, the more the bett...

Amm-i-dent was a popular toothpaste during the 1940s and 1950s. And this is a first for the International Toothpaste Museum - this toothpaste was not tested! Alan Colvin in Nashville graciously donated this tube to the museum. (Thanks, Alan!) So this tube appears more as a historical addition to the museum than a toothpaste you could actually try and enjoy. In terms of finding information on this historical toothpaste, Amm-i-dent fortunately appears in old issues of Time Magazine , The New York Times , Reader's Digest , and in the Smithsonion Museum's collection . The tube design is classic - representative of that era. This toothpaste was more a marketing win than an effective teeth cleaner. On July 21, 1970, the New York Times reported that the FDA listed it among several toothpastes considered ineffective in preventing tooth decay. The product's active ingredients are listed as dibasic ammonium phosphate and carbamide (synthetic urea). Neither of those things sounds lik...

This is definitely one of the more rare and exotic toothpaste that I have experienced. It was made in Florence Italy, or if you live in the rest of the world, it was made in Firenze.   The manufacturer, Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, specializes in luxury, perfumes and beauty products. They do have a few toothpastes. This one was indeed made using powder from iris flowers. Other ingredients that perhaps influence the flavor more are spearmint oil, peppermint oil, cinnamon oil, and clove oil. I have to say that it is one of the most medicinal tasting toothpaste I have ever experienced. But it left my mouth tasting very very clean! The paste itself is opaque and the color of light beach sand. Interestingly, this Italian company has three retail outlets in the US… two in New York City and one in Miami. I would encourage you to visit their website to enjoy a lovely drone clip of the heart of Firenze. And if you go deep enough into the site, you will see that the...

So much of our perception of a product like toothpaste comes from its package design. In college, I minored in package design as part of my graphic design degree, so I have always enjoyed experiencing different package designs. This one delivers. Jordan’s Tastepaste mango mint flavor toothpaste has a very appropriate and fun package design. It was made in Scandinavia and was purchased in Portugal by my dear friend Emily with the help of my daughter Rachel. (Thanks very much!) "Our range of high quality award-winning products are designed to help people keep their teeth healthy for life," according to their website . I should have started using this toothpaste sooner! (My mouth is full of crowns.) Jordan offers four toothpastes in the Tastepaste line. Besides this one, they offer Fresh Mint, Raspberry Mint and Licorice Mint. I'd love to try the licorice mint flavor. Alas, I haven't seen it at any of the retail outlets I frequent. So, how is Mango Mint? Great! It's...

Turkey is more than a bird. It's a country with over 86 million people. (The current spelling is "Türkiye.") And they make toothpaste. Yeni Sanino is a white toothpaste for sensitive teeth. My teeth are not sensitive at the moment, since my recently installed molar crown is settling in well. Sanino has a clean, fresh taste - slightly minty with a hint of - well, the secondary flavor is very elusive. I love that it has fluoride. A Google search did not turn up a company website, nor was there any mention of one on the package. But that search did turn up the following characteristics of this toothpaste: "Featured Features" (as translated by Google Translate): Sensitive Teeth: Special protection against sensitivity. Complete Care: Comprehensive cleaning for oral health. Whitening: Helps teeth look whiter. Advantage: Multiple purchase options and a free toothbrush. By the way, By the way, "hassas dişler" means, "sensitive teeth." My tube was pu...

This is the International Toothpaste Museum's very first head-to-head toothpaste review! At Thanksgiving, I traveled to Dallas, Texas to visit my daughter and son-in-law. It's always great to see them. A mandatory stop during any visit to Dallas is H.E.B. Central Market . It's like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's blended together to make an even better supermarket. The outlet that's near my daughter and son-in-law's place is huge. They supply fresh fruit and veggies of all sorts, an in-house gourmet bakery, and a massive selection of delicious everythings. H.E.B. has a house brand called Field & Future  - "...products [that] are clean & green, inside and out, which helps reduce our impact on natural resources." Naturally, I had to purchase their toothpaste. Whole Foods' 365 brand is its value-oriented product line. My loving wife gave me a tube for Christmas. They are both recommended. Similarities: Excellent value for the money Healthy formu...

The International Toothpaste Museum has been around since April 2008. It has been 17 years since the first toothpaste review! Technology has come a long way since then. Google Lens is a very useful tool that rolled out about ten years ago. It has recently become very easy to use via the simple Google app on my iPhone. Nonio comes from Japan. I have yet to learn how to read Japanese, so I was delighted to see the translation of words on the toothpaste package via Lens: Born from bad breath science Prevents bad breath by sterilizing causitive bacteria Stain off Below are the wrapper graphics. I love that they reflect the many cultural differences between my world and the Japanese world. Lens provided the translations on the right side. Visiting their website yielded much deeper insight into the Nonio brand. Lion is apparently pitching to a Japanese GenZ audience, focusing on health and wellness - and personal relationships! Born from the science of bad breath, NONIO doesn't just ...

Colgate is a worldwide brand. They sell certain toothpastes in some countries and not others because tastes vary around the world. Natural Extracts are sold in many parts of the world but not in the USA. When I did a Google search, the top organic search result for "Natural Extracts" was for a not-quite-in-the-ballpark page  on Saudi Arabia's Colgate website. Adding "Açaí" to the search phrase did yield a relevant page . My lovely daughter-in-law made a business trip to El Salvador and came back with a wonderful gift of Açaí Natural Extracts toothpaste. She gave it to me as a Christmas present. I have taken a long time to write this review, because describing the flavor is almost beyond my abilities. Açaí and Red fruits and berries  (translated from Spanish) is an interesting choice for a toothpaste flavor. One would think of a natural yogurt or ice cream - but not a mouth-cleansing product. The flavor perfectly balances both sweet and refreshing. After brushing...

One thing is true about every toothpaste reviewed on this website - they were purchased by someone using money. And who can't use a little more money? So here are two ways to make your favorite toothpaste last longer... 1. Use a toothpaste squeezer . My nephew, Tijs, gave me a toothpaste squeezer, shown here. (That was very kind of him!) Tijs is the son of my sister Amy, who is the inspiration behind the International Toothpaste Museum  - through her many gifts of exotic toothpastes. There are several varieties of toothpaste squeezers. The model shown is quite powerful and squeezes every last bit of the paste out of the opening, except for the part out at the very top. You can find toothpaste squeezers on the world's largest retailer that begins with "A." (I do not want to necessarily endorse them, since they often squeeze smaller retailers out of business. A simple search on Google yields many other toothpaste squeezer sources.) Be forewarned that the squeezer will m...

 Dr. Rudolph's Tandzout is from Belgium, where my sister lives. Amy very kindly gifted me this healthy tooth salt. It's a pleasant change from my normal tooth-brushing regimen to use powder instead of paste. When I was a kid, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda was an inexpensive alternative to toothpaste for a few people in North America. Probably 20 or 30 years before I was a kid, it was a more widely-known alternative. I distantly remember that they even released flavored baking soda at some point. Arm & Hammer now offers a wide variety of toothpastes . Most of them focus on the health benefits to your teeth - strengthening and even " whole mouth protection ." Whitening and breath freshening could arguably be for the benefit of others. But back to our friend Dr. Rudolph. His tooth salt tastes and feels very much like the baking soda I occasionally cleaned my teeth with years ago... very salty, as you might expect. Sage is the sole non-mineral ingredient. My sense of ...

My friends Rick and Emily traveled to Croatia. They very kindly brought me a tube of Kalodont Pink Clay Clean Beauty toothpaste! I often start with Wikipedia to inform my toothpaste reviews. In this case, they delivered : "Kalodont was first sold in Austria-Hungary in 1887. It later became widely distributed in 34 other countries and obtained a near-monopoly status that caused the word "kalodont" to become synonymous with the word for "tooth paste" in South Slavic languages. Kalodont ceased to be produced in 1981, but returned on the market in 2012." So wow, this is a modern relative to one of the first toothpastes! Today, Kalodont is made by Saponia , a Hungary-based company that makes everything from Arf , a disinfectant cleaner ... to Nila My Cute Baby wet wipes. Hungary is conveniently next to Croatia. I suspect that there is more industry in Hungary than in Croatia.  Saponia's description of this pink clay toothpaste includes, "it promotes r...

This review is an illustration of how busy I get... My friend Mike brought this lovely tube of Yunnan Baiyo over from Beijing, China in April. It's now mid-October, and I'm finally getting time to write about this toothpaste. It's a clean white paste with very straight-ahead minty flavor. The packaging is 99% in Chinese, which is one of my favorite things - it's not produced for export. Google Translate did its action on the box's interior text and let me know that it stops bleeding and heals wounds. I haven't had much bleeding of my gums, thankfully. But if I did, this might be helpful. Google search yielded this : "Yunnan Baiyao (also known as Yunnan Paiyao) is a Chinese herbal mixture consisting primarily of notoginseng that has become a popular product among veterinary clients." And I love the package's illustrations of teeth in various states of distress... Thank you, Mike! You enriched my life - and my teeth. Maybe someday I will get to visit...

Of all the kinds of toothpaste I've reviewed, МЯTHAЯ toothpaste by весна completely eluded all of my attempts to find information. My friend Ben very kindly brought it over from East Asia. He often travels to a country where you can buy Russian products. Their very slow-loading website  did not provide any information about this toothpaste. It is briefly listed on page 19 of their product catalog PDF , which took about three minutes to load. (And it was fun to see some English branding - one of their line of products for kids is called "Crazy Zoo.") Like most toothpastes outside the USA, the package was very multi-lingual. If you speak Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani or Uzbek, you're in luck. English, no. The entire box and tube did not have a single word of English! Since I do not speak Russian, I am running blind. But I can tell you about the taste. It's very clean. There's a strong flavor of mint but not in the traditional North American minty vein. It tastes s...

If you've ever had the pleasure of dining at a high-end gourmet restaurant, you've experienced a palate cleanser . Traditionally, those are sorbet. Cattier-Paris has a series of  "Remineralizing" toothpastes . My sister Amy kindly bought me the lemon flavor. And it works as a wonderful palate cleanser - better than sorbet, even. I find that if I eat something really sweet, it will spoil my taste for whatever's next. So if I'm home and on a serious snack binge, I will occasionally brush my teeth between courses, if whatever I'm about to eat deserves to be fully enjoyed. This lemon toothpaste is natural in composition and very neutral in flavor. Extremely subtle is a good way to describe the flavor. As you might expect, there is no dye and no artificial color. I assume that clay is the abrasive agent that accomplishes the bulk of the cleaning. American tastes tend toward extremes. If Colgate made lemon toothpaste, it would hit you over the head with citrus f...

First - a wonderful, lovely-tasting spearmint toothpaste. Second - maybe a little help with branding is needed: "With My" is possibly meaningful in Korean, but it doesn't mean anything in the USA unless followed by something like, "...healthy teeth." The packaging is elegant and tasteful, but the type is far too small. Now that I've dispensed with criticism, With My is committed to using environmental and sustainable ingredients and materials and gives back 10% of its profits to children's oral care and education. Christina, the brand's founder, has impressive credentials - a DDS from New York University and a BA in public health from Johns Hopkins University. (My father had a Master's in public health from Johns Hopkins, so I've always had a fondness for that school.) Visiting their website is worth it if only to see the photo of Christina butting her head with toothpaste. I love this toothpaste! I haven't tried their lemonade flavor, ...

Fresk-ra is a very generic toothpaste that I picked up during a recent visit to Mexico. It seems that most toothpastes reviewed recently were the result of trips by friends, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to do a little travel. I grabbed this one at a supermarket. Unusual brands are normally found at pharmacies or health-food stores, but this one was buried among a vast sea of Crest and Colgate in a standard supermarket. However, it's no different than so many big-name toothpastes. In fact, it's made by Colgate Palmolive. Amusingly, since it's a low-price brand, it's not even featured on the Mexican Colgate website . (The only way I found the Freska-ra page was through a Google search.) Fresk-ra is a generic-tasting green gel. I am thankful for all the benefits it provides... In case you're wondering, here are what the five-in-one amazing features of this toothpaste are: aliento fresco = fresh breath anticaries = anti-cavities limpieza efectiva = effe...

This is the very first toothpaste I've ever reviewed from South Africa. It pays to have friends from all over the world. My buddy Gary and his wife Lori normally live in a suburb of Cape Town. They kindly sent me this wonderful tube to add to the Toothpaste Museum. We've known each other since our firstborn kids sucked in their first breath of air in Nairobi, Kenya. His daughter arrived something like six months sooner than our son. Both attended the same school during our second shared set of years there. Both went on to get master's degrees. (Our son is also second in starting that rite of passage, but only because he elected to get some "real world" job experience before diving into academia.) But this is a blog about toothpaste. Pure Beginnings Organic Care Fresh Mint Toothpaste is lovely. The taste is subtle and mild. The mint flavor is balanced and not overwhelming. I love the natural beige color, knowing that it comes from using no bleach or dyes. Sadly, l...

Miswak is a historic method of brushing teeth - reputed to have been used by Muslims over 7000 years ago ( Wikipedia ). Hundreds of years ago, Muslims conquered parts of the world, just like the Europeans. With their domination came spreading Arabic culture. Muslims on Lama Island, off the coast of Kenya, built beautiful buildings with similar architecture to some parts of Morocco, thousands of miles away. Miswak toothpastes are found in the north of England , India, Pakistan and other places around the world. This one's from Turkey. Colgate-Palmolive is a huge multinational corporation based in New York. And obviously, they have factories in Turkey. They sell Misvak toothpaste there but not in the USA. (Companies must adapt to each local market to make money.) Note that the Turkish spelling of miswak is "misvak." This toothpaste has a strong flavor - somewhat anise-like and very clean tasting. It's not as mild as many of the European toothpastes I've reviewed. K...

The Marvelous Mrs. Marvis. This is truly the crème de la crème of toothpastes. Or in the correct language, Italian, it would be something like "ultimo primo." (I should ask my son who speaks Italian, but I’m too lazy.) Marvis is made in Firenze, Italia... about an hour and a half from the home of Ferrari. I bought this tube in Italy, and I saw it languishing in the museum (a drawer in my house) and realized that If I didn’t use it, it would dry up and be worthless. That would be a huge shame, since this is such a great toothpaste. Classic Strong Mint is maybe their most popular flavor - and for good reason. It’s wonderfully balanced and not too strong. The paste itself is white and pure. No color dies here! And I’m happy to report that it has fluoride. You can buy Marvis online from several retailers in the US. I’d recommend that you give it a go. You'll enjoy their website . And finally, I reviewed a couple of their other flavors previously. Enjoy!

  Albert Heijn Anti Tandsteen Toothpaste has a mild minty flavor. Like so many other European toothpastes, the flavor is milder than America's mainstream toothpastes. Anti Tandsteen is a pure white chalky paste. It's one of their basic budget offerings - among the least expensive toothpastes they sell. Just like Albert Heijn's Extra Mint Toothpaste , it's almost cheaper than any paste you can buy in the USA. (Sadly, since I purchased it in February 2019, they discontinued the product.) Albert Heijn  is a Netherlands-based supermarket chain that carries a typical amount of toothpaste. I bought this tube while I was visiting my sister Amy, who lives near Antwerp, Belgium. There is an Albert Heijn store within bicycling distance from her house. Just like their Extra Mint, it has fluoride - which always makes me happy. The illustration behind the big white tooth depicts white rays destroying a purple brick wall. And for those of you who don't speak Dutch, tandsteen mea...