Tasting Notes
First-Name Basis With Your Toothpaste Is Closer Than Anyone Should Get
Tom, Jason, Davids and the bees, reviewed the way a food critic would, since they do go in your mouth twice a day.
By Vera Stipple Domestic Affairs · The Method 2026-10-27
Look at the toothpaste shelf and half of it wants to be your friend. Tom’s, Davids, Jason and Burt’s Bees all come at you on a first-name basis, and Hello skips the name and goes straight to the greeting. That is very friendly for a tube. It also raises the question marketing never asked out loud: do you really want to put Tom, or Jason, in your mouth? Twice a day, two minutes a go, is a serious commitment. Most of us would not let Tom stay that long.
Turn the box over and the first names share a surname. Colgate bought Tom’s in 2006 and Hello in 2020, so two of the friendliest tubes in the aisle sit at the same family table. Burt’s Bees belongs to Clorox, which is a lot of bleach for one bee, and Clorox rents the toothpaste out to Procter & Gamble, so the bee has two surnames. Jason was last seen in Hain Celestial’s filings. Davids says it is still family-owned, which makes it the only one here on a first-name basis with itself.
On the palate they are mint-forward with a clean finish, and the body is where they part company. Several Tom’s pastes carry the American Dental Association’s Seal of Acceptance, and those are the ones with fluoride in them. The fluoride-free tubes are a lighter pour: lovely nose, not much structure. Nano-hydroxyapatite is the fluoride-free contender, with good mouth-feel and a name nobody can say through foam.
Then there is where it is made. Tom’s of Maine is still made in Maine, mostly: the Press Herald asked in 2025 and was told the toothpaste comes out of the plant in Sanford, with a few smaller lines made elsewhere. The FDA checked in 2024 and wrote to Colgate about bacteria in the water the plant used, which is not the local ingredient anyone was after. I stopped buying Tom’s when it changed. The paste went soft, the taste wandered off, and “Made in Maine” left the box before I did. Tom married into money in 2006. I cannot say that is what changed him, only that something did.
I landed on David. He leaves my mouth feeling the freshest, with the cleanest finish on the shelf, and he has kept his own name. So far he has not married anyone.
The raccoon in the picture has the squeezing down. He has not figured out the brushing yet.
Ownership is from the companies’ own announcements and filings, the plant’s water from the FDA’s warning letter of November 2024, and the Maine question from the Press Herald’s fact brief of June 2025. The texture, the taste and the box are mine.
