PRODUCT REVIEW: colgate max fresh with mini breath strips

In today's post, I would like to focus on Colgate's "Max Fresh With Mini Breath Strips" brand toothpaste. But first, I would like to give a shout out to Paul Lukas' zine "Beer Frame - The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption" which inspired my attention to product packaging detail and the marketing behind it. You can find Paul Lukas' current writings at Uniwatch Blog - although its unrelated to Beer Frame, it still deals with obsessive attention to details (in this case, athletic uniforms)... and he writes for ESPN as well now.


As it were, I find the fact that they are marketing a toothpaste with "mini-breath strips" to be a little counter-intuitive to the whole "neo-modern fresh breath / anti-halitosis" movement. Because breath strips work largely unaided, save for placing the product on your tongue, their mere inclusion makes it seem as if the toothpaste might do all the work by itself as well. Also, aren't the minty, fruity and cinnamony flavors of old-style toothpaste supposed to freshen your breath in addition to cleaning your teeth? This smells like a marketing gimmick to me. I'd like to see some studies that actually prove that this toothpaste freshens breath better than its non-breathstrip encrusted cousins. The only reason i took notice of this toothpaste is not because the box was flashy (because all major-label brand boxes seem to be flashy), but rather we had a tube of this at home. The only reason we have the tube is that after coupons and ad-matches at meijer's, we had our pick of any of the colgate toothpastes for about a dollar. This one stuck out as new, so we decided to try it.

So what's the verdict? After having used the Cool Mint flavor of "Colgate Max Fresh With Mini Breath Strips" brand toothpaste, I will say that it is minty... about as minty as other varieties of Colgate and Crest, but not overpowering like AquaFresh and the taste is pleasant, but unremarkable. To be perfectly honest, as far as i can tell the breath strips are no more than eye candy as i couldn't detect any "extra refreshment" or anything of that sort. Of course, my point of reference are the listerine breath mint strips, which for the uninitiated, make your mouth feel like its on the bad end of a fight with a 50-foot herculean mint leaf for a minute or two. Like before, this hasn't swayed my toothpaste loyalty, which is still whatever's on sale and have coupons for it.