I like the flavor of peppermint, tolerate spearmint, and absolutely hate wintergreen. So why can’t toothpaste companies label their products so I know which of those three very different mint flavors they’re putting in the tube?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because their packaging is designed by talentless marketing department fuckwads who provide no value or skills of any kind to their corporate overlords, and they’re so terrified of being found out that they churn out endless package variations covered in meaningless gibberish, hoping that their bosses will be so overcome by the sheer volume of new packaging designs that they won’t notice what utterly useless employees they are.

Seriously, if you’ve spent your whole life learning to write and design things and you’re spending your days on Earth designing toothpaste boxes just kill yourself now. Seriously, I mean it. You are a waste of life.

I’d been a Crest user for years. I’ve never liked the taste of Colgate, even though my dentist would give me a little tiny sample tube of Colgate every time I’d visit. I’d stick the tubes at the back end of the bathroom drawer. “I’ll use it the next time I go on a trip,” I’d tell myself, or “If I ever run out of Crest, I’ll have a backup.” The sample tubes piled up, unused. “I’ll donate them to a shelter.” They lie there still, piled up, at the back of the drawer, because they taste disgusting.

Several years ago Crest changed all of their “mint” branding to non-descriptive labels like “Arctic Mint” and “Icy Mint” and “Polar Bear Ass Blast Mint”. No way to tell what mint flavors lurked in those tubes. After the change I picked one and came home with a nasty flavor of wintergreen. Random mint pick #2 gave me spearmint. Random mint name #3 turned out to be peppermint. I wrote the non-descriptive mint name down so I wouldn’t forget it. There was no way I was going to get stuck with another tube of wintergreen.

A couple of years later a new genius took over Crest’s marketing team and they changed all of the names again. I didn’t feel like playing Crest roulette one more time. I switched brands.

I tried Aquafresh. It was orange and white and had the words “mint blast” written in tiny letters tucked into one corner of the package. No way to tell what it was going to taste like. I hoped it wasn’t wintergreen.

It was peppermint. I’d found a new brand.

I jotted the words “Aquafresh Mint Blast” down on my phone’s notepad. Kept buying it for years. Then my last tube just ran out and when I went to CVS they no longer carried it.

What they did have was an entire 18’ long aisle of toothpaste. Half Crest, half Colgate.

There’s also a little tiny section of weird hippy toothpaste brands that are probably made from patchouli and wet chalk. I’ve never seen a hippy with good teeth, so there’s no way in hell I’m trying one of those.

There are at least 200 varieties of Crest now. Their corporate marketing fuckwads must be working overtime and weekends to come up with all of these names and packages covered in broken promises. Then the words on one package caught my eye.

Vibrant Peppermint.

Could it be? Someone from marketing used a descriptive label on a tube of toothpaste? Impossible!

I looked again.

Vibrant Peppermint.

I bought it. Actually, I bought two, because out of the 200 varieties of Crest on the shelf it was the only one labeled “peppermint”, and it only came in a two-tube package.

Got home, squirt some on my toothbrush.

It tastes like salt.

Fucking marketing fuckwads. At least it’s not wintergreen.

I brush my teeth.

iambic@pigdog.org