Viral Video Shows the Insane Number of Options on the Toothpaste Aisle

If you’ve been down the toothpaste aisle at your local retailer lately, which you probably have unless you shop online, you may or may not have noticed the endless options brands have made available to brush your teeth with. While I’m certainly one who appreciates having options, in the case of toothpaste, it’s almost overwhelming.

And I didn’t realize just how confusing it had become to shop for toothpaste, until TikTok user @peterdraws1 pointed out the dozens of choices in an under three-minute video. He, like many others, wants to know, “What’s going on in the toothpaste aisle?”

Here’s the scope of his video, which will probably leave you scratching your head, trying to figure out the same thing he’s asking.

The toothpaste aisle has become quite the chaotic place. While it might look perfectly organized, with colorful, shimmering boxes neatly stacked one behind the other, it’s really a spot in the store that can have someone standing there for a good 10 minutes trying to decide which toothpaste to get.

As @peterdraws1 highlights in his video, popular brands like Crest and Colgate now offer at least eight options, or more, making it almost impossible to find the exact toothpaste you bought last time. Even @peterdraws1 admits that while he’s been a “Crest guy,” he doesn’t “even know which one is the regular one anymore.”

He begins by panning over the Crest options, showing Crest Plus, and then jokingly adds, “Plus what?” before really jumping into just how confusing the boxes really are. “Someone check the math on this one,” and he shows a box with a plus sign and then another plus sign accompanied by the word “whitening.” He then questions, “Why would you get whitening when you could get Active Foam Plus Whitening?”

He then moves on to Crest Pro-Health, which claims to protect “100 percent of the whole mouth,” and then up a shelf to Crest Pro-Health Advanced, which also offers gum protection. Both boxes claim to protect the whole mouth, so he asks the obvious: what’s really the difference? He also points out that the Pro-Health Advanced box appears superior because it’s shinier. “Why would they make the box shinier if it’s not better?” he asks.

That’s already, what, four options, and the choices don’t stop there. There’s also Crest 3D White, with one version boasting its capability to give you clean breath, and another with “stain-blasting foam.” Between pointing out all the options, he even has a friendly conversation with another shopper, who also questions if any of the toothpastes are actually different.

He then hops over to Colgate, starting with a toothpaste that claims to remove 95 percent of daily surface stains. To take it up a notch, he pans over to a Colgate package that can potentially remove five years of surface stains. Another goes even further, claiming it can tackle 15 years of deep-set stains. One of the more comical moments comes when he pans up to the very top shelf: “And here we have the vertical boxes,” he says, adding, “For vertical boxes, you gotta pay twice as much.”

While I knew there were endless toothpaste options, @peterdraws1 really puts just how many into perspective. And while it’s definitely overwhelming for buyers, think about the burden workers fulfilling pick-up orders or Instacart deliveries face. What happens if they can’t find the exact item among the endless sea of options? Then they have to pick the next best thing, but which one would even be considered better? It’s obviously a lot to think about. And it certainly got folks’ minds working.

One commenter pointed out that this is a case of companies competing hard with themselves. But another quickly noted that it’s not really competition, it’s capitalism at its finest. By creating so many variations, these brands are able to dominate the toothpaste aisle, making it nearly impossible not to buy from one of the major names (Crest or Colgate, I’m looking at you).