Whenever I go to the grocery store or a pharmacy, the vast majority of toothpaste on the shelf is flavored with mint. Sure, there are other toothpaste flavors, but most of the other flavors are marketed to children or offered by dentists. The only other toothpaste flavor I've seen when walking around at an average pharmacy like CVS that is directed at adults is flavored with cinnamon - and it's exceptionally hard to find flavorless toothpaste right off the shelf!
So, how did this situation come to be? How did mint become the default toothpaste flavor - and where did the association of "mint" with "clean" come from, especially with regards to breath? Further, how old is that association - does it date back to BCE, or is it a recent invention?
/u/HereForTheFish and /u/Sriad teamed up to answer this question wonderfully last year:
It's a fascinating story of how an underlying biopsychological fact (the perception of mint as "fresh" because the chemical signals "cool") becomes culturally embedded through consumer products and advertising linking that equation to cleanliness.
Be sure to read both posts!
Does anyone know when and how quickly mint took over the dental market? The thread pointed to mentions Pepodent as the first successful company to use mint but did it just take off worldwide from there? Was it a decade or more like half a century? My grandparents always used cinnamon as did my great-grandmother (so 30s-90s) I just assumed it was their generation but maybe not!