Toothpaste

Hello there. I am your friend, Toothpaste. I am squishy and minty and I live on your toothbrush. My job is to make your teeth sparkly clean. Swish, swish, bubble, bubble. I help your breath smell super fresh and make you want to smile big. It makes me so happy to help. But I was not always in a cozy, squeezy tube like I am today. A long, long time ago, I was very different and even a little bit messy.

Way, way back, some of my very old family members lived in a place called Egypt. I was not a creamy paste then. I was a powder. People made me from things like crushed eggshells or ashes from a fire. Can you imagine that. To brush their teeth, they had to mix my powder with water to make a paste every single time. It was a messy job. Then, in the 1850s, a kind dentist named Dr. Washington Sheffield had a great idea. He wanted to make me easier to use. He mixed and stirred and made me into a smooth, creamy paste that was always ready to go. I was so excited. No more messy powder for me.

I lived in jars for a while, which was nice and new. But then came my biggest adventure of all. In 1892, Dr. Sheffield's son saw artists painting beautiful pictures. The artists squeezed their colorful paints from little metal tubes. He thought, 'My father's toothpaste could go in a tube too.' What a brilliant idea. I moved out of my jar and into a brand new home, a squeezable tube. Now, it was so easy to hop onto a toothbrush. I help children just like you all over the world keep their smiles bright and healthy every single day.