There’s some kind of “Click LIKE if you were a Crest kid” thing on Facebook today, but after giving it some thought, I realized that I was really more of a Stripe kid. I was always fascinated by the crisp, straight red lines (the new blue stuff really doesn’t do it for me) and I wondered how they did it. I did assume that there was something going on in the innards with different colored pastes, because when I looked at the tube opening closely, I could see the little openings around the rim. Chalk this one up to “Huh, so that’s how they did it.”

I was wondering recently about this very thing, and why Stripe had gone blue, so to speak. I suppose too many parents were traumatized by the sight of their kids foaming at the mouth in various gaudy shades of red and pink. I could only imagine how in thousands of households in the late 60’s when original Stripe was introduce, how many excited kids thought they were going to brush their teeth with red-and-white candy-canes? Because let’s face it, Stripe was totally aimed at kids who like candy-canes… which must really have caused Stripe-based strife in homes that didn’t celebrate Christmas, maybe? To my knowledge, there was never a Hanukkah gelt-based children’s toothpaste, though if their had been there would have been a LOT of feverish swapping back and forth at the schoolyards.

Anyway, it’s all too easy for me to picture thousands or millions of children brushing merrily after begging their parents to get the product they saw on TV. And I imagine gobs of pink foam dripping everywhere, and horrified parents wondering if their kids had contracted some horrifying form of rabies, or raging gum disease. That’s not to say that there aren’t red toothpastes – just not a lot currently on the American market other than Close-Up, which is marketed more towards adults.

I’m currently using (pause to run upstairs) Crest Pro-Health so I’m a Crest adult, at least. Do I get a lollipop?

And that is probably why Stripe only seems to come in the “minty fresh” blue stripe now. That’s not to say that there aren’t red toothpastes (c

Toothpaste tubes are normally filled from the flat end, which is then folded over and sealed. In the case of Stripe, a red toothpaste was first filled around the special fitting; the white toothpaste, filled second, held the red toothpaste in place at the top of the tube.

When the tube was squeezed, the white toothpaste would run through the special inner tube, while the pressure of the squeeze simultaneously forced the red toothpaste through the tiny orifices at the end. With the flow of red matched to the flow of white, the toothpaste emerged from the nozzle perfectly striped.

Via The Straight Dope: How did they get the stripes in Stripe toothpaste?

That being said, I wish I’d been more of any kind of toothpaste ADULT in recent years. Even though I’d been seeing the dentist regularly, I slacked off about a year and a half ago, and so now I have to catch up, big time, with flossing and a special prescription mouth rinse. Meh.