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This article was on the Front Page of the March 24, 2000 -Wall Street Journal
Emphasizing the need for a new toothbrush holer

There's One Cavity New Toothbrushes Just Can't Handle

Many People Bristle at Trend Toward Much Fatter Grips That Won't Fit in Holders

By Mark Maremont

03/24/2000 The Wall Street Journal Page A1

The chaos in Jan Beebe's household started when her husband brought home new
toothbrushes for their children. Ms. Beebe, a St. Paul, Minn., social worker and mother
of four, discovered the colorful brushes were too fat to fit the family's toothbrush
olders. She tried cramming them halfway in, but they kept falling on the floor.
Without a natural resting place, the brushes started to migrate. One turned up amid the
bath toys. Another was unearthed near the backyard sandbox.

"I like things to be where they belong," Ms. Beebe complains. The toothbrush used to be
a simple affair, with a handle shaped like a Popsicle stick and a few rows of straight
plastic bristles. But in the past few years, brushes seem to have gone on steroids,
morphing into high-tech dental implements. The bristles have been angled, tinted,
powertipped and equipped with usage indicators, but they're still attached to a handle.
It's the latter that has gotten dysfunctional.

One hulking new model, Oral-B's Cross Action, has a rubberized handle more than three
times as thick as that of an ordinary brush. Other handles have sprouted unusual bumps,
curves or angles. Ostensibly aimed at improving ergonomics, the trend probably has more to do with economics; the new, zaftig brushes can sell for more than twice the
price of their skinnier kin. But they have also upset a decades-old harmony between the
humble dental tool and its traditional parking space, the multiholed holder.

Toothbrush makers admit they did this on purpose. Until a few years ago, when
Colgate-Palmolive Co.'s brush designers went to the drawing board, making handles fit
holders was the No. 1 priority. But studies of how people brush convinced the company
that "we were letting the tail wag the dog," says Tom Mintel, associate director of
toothbrush development.

"Holders shouldn't dictate your design."

In 1997, Colgate came out with its sinuously curved Wave. Research had shown some
people change their grip more than 100 times during brushing, Mr. Mintel says, and the
flat surfaces of olderstyle handles made them more likely to slip and harder to
maneuver. The Wave's thicker, rounded handle makes teeth-cleaning "less of an
arduous task," he says. Colgate found that people spent more time brushing with it.

And more time complaining. Colgate received 1,206 calls about holder problems in the
Wave's first year. The company stood its ground. Robert Blanchard, who heads
Colgate's toothbrush division, says follow-ups show that many of these people are still
Wave buyers. "People recognize that they can't let a bathroom fixture control their oral
health," Mr. Blanchard adds.

Other manufacturers followed suit, especially with children's brushes. Procter &
Gamble Co. makes a brush shaped like a whale, with tail flukes wide enough to
guarantee frequent beachings on the bathroom counter. Johnson & Johnson markets a
thick, cylindrical Reach model with a corkscrewed handle, aimed at tots one to five.

But the knockout punch came from Gillette Co.'s Oral-B unit, when it released the Cross
Action, in 1998. Armed with angled bristles designed to pulverize plaque, the $4.99
brush sports a rounded grip as fat as the handle of a small mallet, with a thick bulge in
its belly.

Oral-B says it went wide after videotaping families in their bathrooms and discovering
that many people don't rest their thumbs on the handle, but instead grasp it like a
hammer. For these people -- especially the 28.2% of the population Oral-B calls "power
grippers" -- a svelte handle can slip and make brushing tiring.

Mike Rizzuto, a bathroom-accessory buyer for the Gracious Home stores in New York
City, recently switched to a Cross Action. But it was too big for his wallmounted holder,
so Mr. Rizzuto now keeps his brush in a tumbler. "I'm in the business," he says, "and I
can't hang my toothbrush ."

Mr. Rizzuto avoids the usual white gunk growing in the bottom of the cup by meticulously drying his toothbrush with a towel after each use. But he'd prefer to use
the holder. "Otherwise, why have it?" he says. "I can't use it as a bud vase."

Anticipating such problems, Oral-B quietly produced about 360,000 little metal stands
that can hold a single Cross Action. It packaged some with the brushes during a
promotion last year, and has sent about 1,600 complimentary holders to complaining
customers.

David Weber, Oral-B's head of research and development, insists that the holder
problem applies only to a "subset" of people. He says that only 19% of U.S. households,
primarily in the Northeast and other older sections of the country, use built-in holders
that probably won't accommodate fat brushes. Other people store their brushes in the
medicine cabinet or in cups. But Oral-B's research shows that 34% keep them in
stand-alone countertop holders-and many of these can't handle the new girth, either.

Katrina Kenison, an author who lives outside Boston, ran into problems when her sons'
new brushes wouldn't fit her stand-alone repository, and the boys started throwing them
in her husband's bathroom drawer, with his electric razor and hairbrush.Unhappy with
this arrangement, her husband would quietly transfer the brushes to Ms. Kenison's
drawer when she wasn't around. That sparked "one of those silent, ongoing marital
battles," says Ms. Kenison, who retaliated by throwing the brushes back into her
husband's drawer. She insists her drawer "tended to be somewhat clean," while the
brushes in her husband's drawer would collect "that razor stubble that falls off like
powdery snow." Tired of cleaning the brushes, Ms. Kenison bought a new holder she
was sure would fit. It almost does. "You lift the top off, put the brushes in, and
then kind of jiggle" the top on, she says. "It takes a minute."

Guy Esnouf, a pharmaceutical executive, moved into his house in Devon, Pa., in 1997, to
discover he could insert his brush only "about a quarter of an inch" into the built-in holder. While shaving, he sometimes knocked the precariously perched brush into the
soapy water. "I'd have to fish it out and wash all the little hairs off it," he says.
Mr. Esnouf finally found a holder that works: his travel toilet kit-now permanently
transferred from under the counter to a spot next to the sink. As for sanitary conditions
in the bottom of the kit, Mr. Esnouf says: "I try not to look."

Samuel Heath & Sons PLC, a British-based importer of upscale bathroom accessories,
says complaints about undersize holes prompted it last year to introduce a new,
adjustable holder that should fit "almost anything" and comes in finishes such as Satin
Nickel or Antique Gold. Price: $108.

Croscill Home Fashions, another supplier, says it, too, is adjusting by making holders
with bigger holes. Maybe not big enough. Of 80 holders on display on a recent day at a
Linens 'n Things Inc. store in Newton, Mass., the corpulent Cross Action couldn't squeeze into a single one, including numerous Croscill designs. Carl Legreca, a Croscill
executive, says his company is planning to make the holes even bigger in this spring's
models. Meanwhile, he reckons the only receptacle guaranteed to hold the Cross Action
is a holder with four brush slots and a large, square opening meant for toothpaste tubes.
The toothpaste hole, he says, "should certainly be large enough."