International Toothpaste Museum

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...