Get yourself a cross-action stimulator, dual effect massager, with comfort grip!

Do you want to build confidence by enjoying cross action stimulation with a dual effect massager with comfort grip? How about some firm professional triple action with your choice of full or standard head? This is guaranteed to give you maximum flexible performance advantage and it’s all clinically proven.

Confused? You shouldn’t be as I’m just down at the supermarket picking up a toothbrush.

The humble toothbrush and paste has come a long way in ten years. While the big decision used to be in deciding what colour brush you wanted, toothbrush design now seems to have been hijacked by the same people who produce Star Trek conventions.

Fuel for these tooth spaceships is also on the extraterrestrial radar with toothpaste choice a bewildering experience. How can you not be impressed by the option of extreme clean with micro active foaming bubbles? No longer must you accept simple fresh breath, it has to be advanced fresh or what about fresh confidence plus whitening? Decide now whether you want your whitening paste with or without tartar control or take the time to consider the advantages of anti-bacterial fluoride.

Health and safety awareness must make you wonder whether you really should be putting combined baking soda and peroxide into your mouth. If only I had paid more attention in school chemistry. Is it a sign of weakness to be seen buying fluoride gentle whitening or sensitive toothpaste with or without a fresh stripe?

Beam me up Scottie.

Freedom of choice is clearly not as great as it is cracked up to be. I am starting to regret having already used my old toothbrush to clean the bathroom drain.

Floss is another product caught in the expanding oral hygiene range as our dentists now routinely frighten us into believing that our molars will drop out if we do not regularly scour the gaps between our teeth. Fair enough but given that floss is visually identical in form to a small reel of cotton, you would think that competitors would be hard pressed to produce much choice here.

Think again.

A casual glance at the floss section of the supermarket and you will see the choice here includes waxed whitening, satin floss, essential floss, total care expanding gentle floss, denotape or mint waxed. The executive flosser can now impress his bathroom mirror with a vibrating power flosser and pick with disposable flosser and pick refills. Yes indeed, a great little stocking filler for Christmas.

Not content with mere brushing to keep your teeth white, you can now buy liquid whiteners to paint teeth so your secret life as a black tea drinking smoker with a taste for liquorice can be forever hidden from the casual observer. After a few red wines at the local pub you are now able to pop into the loo to powder your nose and touch up your teeth. Mind you, after a few drinks you do need to ensure that you don’t end up with powdered teeth and a white nose.

Back in the supermarket, I was drawn towards a double headed toothbrush with tongue scraper as it offered prospective buyers the opportunity of feeling the texture of the tongue scraper on a sample scratch and sniff pad attached to the packaging.

It felt strangely comforting.

Given the price and design of some of these brushes I was regretting not having bought a colour swatch of the bathroom tiles to ensure that my new brush was going to tone with the room. There is so much going on with some of these toothbrushes you want to make sure that it is going to fit in to its new environment.

Conventional toothbrush holders can now only be used as accessory trays as giant launch pads must be fitted to accommodate the new rocket ships from planet brush.

Thunderbirds are go.

I am sure my old brush didn’t have soft gum stimulators with outstanding sonic cleaning. What exactly is sonic cleaning? I am obviously so out of touch with the modern world. I really need a fix of teeth cleaning to restore my fresh confidence.

It’s no wonder dentists don’t want to show their faces in toothbrush advertisements. They are obviously cacking themselves laughing at this mad consumer world.

Anyway, I’ve decided on my brush. It’s a red one in a plain pack. I found it on the bottom shelf just across from a tube of simple fluoride toothpaste. The only hint of variety it seemed to offer was the description “medium” written on top. I would have got a “soft” but I seem to have toughened up.

Maybe I will raid the sewing kit later for some floss.