Pepsodent
Encyclopedia
Toothpaste
Toothpaste is a paste or gel dentifrice used with a toothbrush as an accessory to clean and maintain the aesthetics and health of teeth. Toothpaste is used to promote oral hygiene: it serves as an abrasive that aids in removing the dental plaque and food from the teeth, assists in suppressing...
with a minty flavour derived from Sassafras
Sassafras
Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia.-Overview:...
. The brand is owned by Unilever
Unilever
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....
, but in 2003 the rights to the brand in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
were bought by Church and Dwight
Church and Dwight
Church & Dwight Co., Inc. is a minor U.S. manufacturer of household products that is based in Princeton, New Jersey. While it manufactures many items, it is by far best known for its Arm & Hammer line which includes baking soda and many other items made with it. The company was founded in 1896 to...
.
The history of Pepsodent goes back at least to the 1920s.
It was advertised for its purported properties fighting tooth decay, attributed in advertisements to the supposed ingredient Irium. Irium is another word for sodium lauryl sulfate, an inexpensive ion
Ion
An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. The name was given by physicist Michael Faraday for the substances that allow a current to pass between electrodes in a...
ic surfactant
Surfactant
Surfactants are compounds that lower the surface tension of a liquid, the interfacial tension between two liquids, or that between a liquid and a solid...
. However, in a 1994 speech, then-FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
chairman Reed Hundt
Reed Hundt
Reed E. Hundt was chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, he served for most of Clinton's first term. He was succeeded by William Kennard.- Biography :Hundt attended high school in Washington D.C at the prestigious St....
claimed that the "Irium" mentioned in Pepsodent advertisements "didn't exist".
Another ingredient, "I.M.P." was purported to whiten teeth. Its best-known slogan was “You'll wonder where the yellow went / when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!” British comedian Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott OBE is a British comedian, actor, television presenter and personality.-Early life:...
referred to the slogan in one of his stand-up
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
routines, saying “On your tongue - that's where the yellow went!”
Pepsodent was a very popular brand before the mid-1950s, but its makers were slow to add fluoride
Fluoride
Fluoride is the anion F−, the reduced form of fluorine when as an ion and when bonded to another element. Both organofluorine compounds and inorganic fluorine containing compounds are called fluorides. Fluoride, like other halides, is a monovalent ion . Its compounds often have properties that are...
to its formula to counter the rise of other highly promoted brands such as Crest
Crest (brand)
Crest is a brand of toothpaste made by Procter & Gamble in Germany and in United States of America and sold worldwide. In many countries in Europe, such as Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary and Romania, it is sold as Blend-A-Med, the name of an established German...
and Gleem toothpaste
Gleem toothpaste
Gleem is a brand of toothpaste made by the Procter & Gamble company. Advertisements in the 1950s stated that it has GL-70, a supposed odor- and bacteria-fighting compound. Gleem...
by Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
, and Colgate's eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous product; sales of Pepsodent plummeted. Today Pepsodent is a “value brand” marketed primarily in discount stores and retails for roughly half the price of similarly-sized tubes of Crest or of Colgate.
In the 1930s a massive animated neon advertising sign, featuring a young girl on a swing, hung on a building in Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. This ad was re-created for the climax of the 2005 film King Kong
King Kong (2005 film)
King Kong is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson. It is a remake of the 1933 film of the same name and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrays Kong....
.
The product was discontinued in South Africa in 1974 but was revived in 1976 with a new ad slogan "Gets Your Teeth Their Whitest" featuring celebrity endorsers Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award....
, Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence is an American singer and actor, perhaps best known as a member of a duo with his wife Eydie Gormé, billed as "Steve and Eydie"...
, and others. The popular slogan was also changed in South Africa to "You'll wonder where the dullness went / when you polish your teeth with Pepsodent".
Pepsodent is still sold as a Unilever property in all markets except the United States and Canada.
In Vietnam Pepsodent called P/S
In popular culture
Pepsodent was so popular that Rodgers and HammersteinRodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
included a reference to it in their long-running 1949 hit musical South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
, when the Seabees sing about the native woman Bloody Mary:
Bloody Mary's chewing betel nuts
And she don't use Pepsodent.
It's also referenced in some versions of Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
's song You're The Top
You're the Top
"You're The Top" is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other...
:
You're an old Dutch master, you're Mrs. Astor,
You're Pepsodent
One of the great memories of Pepsodent is from an old Mad Magazine 50 or 60 years ago. It had a cartoon (realistic) of Leonardo Di Vinci looking at his easel, sitting in front of the Mona Lisa thinking, "I wonder where the yellow went?" Among the tubes of paint is a tube of Pepsodent.