Well, here I go again with still more things we saw in our youth but don't see anymore these days.  This time it's toothpaste brands. In the 1950's when I was a kid there were all kinds of different toothpaste brands. In direct antithesis to today, all the toothpaste brands back then just cleaned teeth, these days all of them claim to "whiten" teeth too. The only exception in the old days was Pepsodent. Its slogan was, "You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent". The present "white teeth" fad started in fantasyland Hollywood aka Holly"weird", where all the movie stars get professional teeth whitening in a vain attempt to look gorgeous and young. For the last several years, in the absence of the old brands of toothpastes that actually cleaned teeth without all the "bells and whistles",  I have always brushed my teeth with baking soda to avoid the fluoride that's in every toothpaste brand these days. I'll resist the temptation to list all the dangers of fluoride. Yes, I know it's also in our drinking water, but I have a filter to remove it. On the other hand, brushing my teeth with an "Arm & Hammer" sounds dangerous too. What ever happened to toothpaste that just cleaned your teeth? These days virtually every toothpaste brand I've seen has fluoride, whiteners, tartar control, mouthwash, and other unknown compounds. What's next? A toothpaste that not only has all the above ingredients, but also has additional ingredients that will cure all the diseases known to man and make the brusher immortal. Mark my words, it's only a matter of time until we see, "fat free" toothpaste! Don't even get me started on this latest "fat free" nonsense!

 

One of my favorite toothpaste brands when I was a kid was "Ipana". I liked the TV commercials that had Bucky Beaver who hawked it. Since I had "buck teeth" as a kid, I identified with Bucky Beaver, who also had "buck teeth". I always figured that was the reason his name was "Bucky". Unfortunately, this, like most of the old brands of things we saw as kids are not around now. Another neat thing Tim and I had then were toothbrushes that were small plastic pistols with a toothbrush that protruded from the end of the barrel. Using this as a kid no doubt contributed to the fact that as an adult I tend to "shoot my mouth off" all too often. After "shooting my mouth off", the bullet always seems to end up in my foot. Despite the fact that we had those cool toothbrushes, we rarely if ever brushed our teeth. About the only time I can recall that we did brush our teeth was just before a visit to the dentist, which of course didn't fool him at all. This always resulted with me getting bloody gums as the result of a foreign rough object brushing against them. A few years ago, I finally started to brush my teeth at least twice a day for 2 reasons. The first is that the baking soda eliminates "dragon mouth" when I first get up in the morning, and because I got tired of hearing Sue, my dental hygienist, always nagging me about brushing my teeth every day. Ergo (That's a fancy word for therefore. I swallowed a thesaurus when I was a kid), I did indeed start to brush every day. This has resulted in several benefits, not only does it eliminate "dragon mouth", but I can now play "nibby nose" with the cats without them running away from me and heading for the litter box room for a much better aroma.

 

Another old brand of toothpaste back then was "Stripe". I'm not sure if this brand is still around either. I was always fascinated how they could get the toothpaste to come out stripped. I figured they did that the same way they make stripped and polka dot paint in cartoons. One day I took a tube of Stripe apart and found the secret. There were slots impacted with thick red toothpaste inside the tube neck. Now if I could only figure out how they make stripped and polka dot paint in cartoons. Since Walt Disney and Hanna and Barbera are dead, I guess I'll never know.

 

Another toothpaste brand back then was "Gleem" with GL-70. They never revealed what GL-70 was, but I figure it was a phony name they made up for fluoride. No doubt, everyone was fooled by this cunning semantic subterfuge.

 

Back then, toothpaste came in steel tubes, which caused me big problems. The reason for this was that I, of course being unorganized, just squeezed the tube any old way, which resulted in a crinkled curly flat squashed tube. Tim, on the other hand, because of his orderliness, always carefully rolled up the tube from the end as it got progressively empty, which resulted in a smooth short tube. I would come around and squash it again causing the neatly rolled up end to unroll and causing the tube to again be flat, curly, and crinkly. Usually this was a mute point because since we brushed our teeth so rarely, the toothpaste usually dried out in the tube and became like concrete. When I was older, I started to use toothpowder in metal containers to avoid the flat, curly, and crinkly toothpaste tube syndrome. Of course, I can't find toothpowder these days even in plastic containers. However, due to my poor teeth (I did brush more than just one tooth) brushing habits back then, the toothpowder would eventually harden as well since about the only time I brushed my teeth even then was right before a visit to the dentist. On every visit to the dentist, they would always threaten me that if I didn't start brushing my teeth, they would drill the cavity-infested teeth without Novocain. It's a good thing they never carried out their threats because after my every visit, they would have had to replace their ceiling. Even now when my dentist, after my earnest pleading, gives me a double or more often a triple dose of Novocain, I always ask them if they have insurance on the building. I've always had a very low pain tolerance.

 

When I was in grade school, our health teacher, Miss Meyers, taught us how to properly brush our teeth. Of course, like all the other subjects taught in school, I considered this a waste of time at least for me since I never bushed my teeth anyway. Interestingly enough, they taught us the same method in Navy Basic Training. Even by then, I still never bushed my teeth. Even if I did, I wouldn't have had time in the morning. After reveille at 0430 (4:30 AM), they only gave us about 10 minutes or less to get cleaned up and dressed for morning muster and inspection. If I had taken time to brush my teeth after a 15 second masochistic shave, I would have been late for morning muster and would have had a bloody mouth as well as my constant bloody face as a result of shaving so fast. I sure didn't want to get any blood on my rifle or uniform. During inspection, having even as much as a speck of dust on your rifle or uniform would be a fate worse than death.

 

Before I started to brush my teeth on a daily basis, when I took each cat to the vet for their yearly check up, the vet always said that due to plague build up that I should occasionally brush the cat's teeth! I told her that I didn't even brush my own teeth and my plaque build up was a whole lot more than the cats'! She then said that they could brush the cat's teeth for $60.00! I never took them up on it. I like cats, but I wasn't about to pay that much for one toothbrushing! Perhaps next time I should make a deal with them to brush my teeth. After all the time and strenuous labor it would take for them to remove all the thick plague from my teeth, it would be worth $60.00.

 

I can't recall any additional brands of toothpaste when I was a kid. I'm sure there were many more. On the other hand, how could I remember since I never used it anyway? I had much better things to do in a store when I was a kid other than looking at all the toothpaste displays. The only reason I can recall the old brands now was that I saw the commercials for them on TV. It's quite possible that if it hadn't been for the toothpaste commercials I saw as a kid, I would not have had any idea that toothpaste existed.

 

Now, as to "flossing" my teeth, well, maybe I will get to that someday too. Good grief, it took me over 50 years just to start brushing my teeth on a regular basis, other than once a year. I just hope I see some commercials on TV so I'll know that there is such a thing as dental floss and what brand to look for so I can locate it, if it does indeed exist, at Wal-Mart. I wonder if it's in the baking soda aisle? Well, I hate to give you, my faithful loyal readers, the "brush off", but while I'm thinking about it, I need to go compare the cats' teeth with mine to see if my daily baking soda brushing is doing any good, since they brush their teeth about as often as I used to.