- Pepsodent
Pepsodent is a brand of
toothpaste with awintergreen flavor. It was formerly owned byUnilever (but, since 2003, byChurch and Dwight in USA).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 inexpensiveion icsurfactant Susan Budavari, Maryadele J. O'Neil, Ann Smith, Patricia E. Heckelman, Joanne F. Kinneary. 1996. The Merck Index, twelfth edition. Merk & Co., Inc.: White house Station, NJ. Page 1478] . However, in a 1994 speech, then-FCC chairmanReed Hundt claimed that the "Irium" mentioned in Pepsodent advertisements "didn't exist". [cite paper |author=Reed E. Hundt |authorlink=Reed Hundt |title=Address Before the NAB Radio Show |date=October 13 1994 |url=http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Hundt/spreh432.txt |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]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 referred to the slogan in one of his stand-up routines, saying “On your tongue - that's where the yellow went!”Pepsodent was a very popular brand before the mid '50s, but its makers were slow to add
fluoride to its formula to counter the rise of other highly promoted brands such as Crest andGleem toothpaste byProcter & Gamble , and Colgate'seponym 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 inNew York City . This ad was re-created for the climax of the 2005 film "King Kong".The product was discontinued in South Africa in 1974. 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 India [http://www.hll.com/brands/pepsodent.asp] , Indonesia [http://www.pepsodent.co.id] , Chile [http://www.pepsodent.cl/sitio.html] , Finland [http://www.pepsodent.fi/] , and several other countries.
In popular culture
Pepsodent was so popular that
Rodgers and Hammerstein included a reference to it in their long-running 1949 hit musical "South Pacific", when the Seabees sing about the native woman Bloody Mary:"Bloody Mary's chewing betel nuts"
"And she don't use Pepsodent".References
[http://adclassix.com/classictvcommercials/1948pepsodenttoothpaste.htm Advertisment Video]
ee also
*
List of toothpaste brands External links
* [http://www.springbokradio.com/ADSPEPSODENT.html 1972 South African radio commercial]
* [http://www.churchdwight.com/Conprods/oralcare/ Church and Dwight Oral Care Website]
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