Toothpaste, it’s all the same, right? …Wrong! Macleans Whitening

Macleans Whitening 'toothpaste'

I can tell you now, I am a man who favours toothpaste with milder flavours and I was brought up on Aquafresh Mild & Minty. I’m far less picky now, I can handle the various different varieties, the difference between which I don’t fully understand. I mean, honestly, what’s the difference between Aquafresh Total Care +Whitening and Aquafresh Ultimate? Surely you can’t get much better than something which offers to totally care for your teeth and even make them a bit whiter than they used to be? Perhaps I am becoming cynical in my old age. I am actually using Colgate at the moment, but it’s just what I found in the flat, it doesn’t really matter to me; I have come to the conclusion that toothpaste is toothpaste… or so I thought.

I stayed at my parents’ house this weekend and since they expect to have their kids drop in on them with almost no prior warning, they are well prepared for such an occasion, keeping, as they do, a supply of toothpaste and other bathroom essentials for everyone to use. They currently have, probably because it’s cheap, more than one tube of Macleans Whitening toothpaste.

Macleans toothpaste, according to the research I have done over the last 18 seconds, is made by GlaxoSmithKline, the exact same company that produces my preferred brand teeth cleaning and mouth freshening products. You would hope that this is a good sign. It is not.

Macleans have apparently strived to produce a toothpaste which, regardless of its cleaning properties, tastes like you are having pepper (freshly ground, not red) shoved up your nose through the back entrance. The first sign that there is something strange going on is when you sqeeze the stuff out of the tube. Instead of being white, or having some interesting colours involved, you are faced with a white and clear/translucent striped mess. At this stage it’s easy to judge on appearances and on my first attempt I made a big effort not to do-so. Putting it in my mouth, instead of being treated to an immediate hit of mint, you are immediately conscious that the mint flavouring, which is pretty pathetic, is doing an appalling job of masking whatever disaster is going on underneath.

If we can all accept that regardless of what promises are made on the box in order to bump up the price that most toothpaste is, indeed, pretty similar. (Over the two days I used it my teeth certainly aren’t noticably whiter) Then we should also be able to agree that personal preference will be in no-small-part down to taste. All things being equal then, if it doesn’t whiten and doesn’t taste good, this is a toothpaste to be avoided like the plague. Do yourself a favour and step away from the special offer! 1/5

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