ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY! ™ Toothbrush and Orajel ® MY WAY!™ Kids' Toothpaste---and a $100 Visa Gift Card Giveaway

This is a review of:

• ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY! ™ battery-powered toothbrush for Girls,
• ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY! ™ battery-powered toothbrush for Boys, and
• Orajel ® MY WAY™ Kids' Toothpaste

For the review, they sent me five complete toothbrush sets: five containers of toothpaste, four "for Boys" toothbrushes, and one "for Girls" toothbrush.

Each toothbrush kit contains one ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® toothbrush (this is the same brand we already use), plus 141 stickers for custom decorating---including alphabet stickers, which is awesome because the night before last, I broke up an argument about whose toothbrush was whose, so I was especially keen on the idea of PERSONALIZATION.

Although the official names of the toothbrushes include "for Girls" and "for Boys," the boxes themselves don't include those words---which I think was a good decision. I already feel a little uncomfortable with the division of "the stickers in the blue box" (dinosaurs, race cars, sports, robots) and "the stickers in the pink box" (make-up, unicorns, high heel shoes, princesses, rainbows, flowers). The 12-year-old son said, "Hey, no fair---it's all cars and sports. Can I have some of the rainbows and smiley faces?" The 10-year-old son said indignantly, "I got THESE [held up a sheet of skateboards and a sheet of race cars] and Elizabeth got THESE [held up a sheet of cute animals]. AND she got 'LOL' and 'OMG'! Those aren't anything to do with girls! They should be in all the boxes!"

There are way more stickers in the box than any one toothbrush can hold, so I had the boys wait until Elizabeth was done with hers, and then they used the extra cute animals for their brushes. I suggested they use their alphabet stickers for writing things such as LOL.

Perfectly happy with her stickers

The toothpaste has it right, I think: one single variety, orange box, and an assortment of stickers including animals, rainbows, sports, princesses, skulls, and cars. Message: Anyone might have any variety of interests! Choose your own combination!

Left to right:
ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY! ™ for Girls
Orajel ® MY WAY™ Kids' Toothpaste
ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY! ™ for Boys

One option is to have the child open the toothbrush and toothpaste at the same time, so the child would have access to the more general assortment of stickers from the toothpaste box to use on both the toothpaste and the toothbrush. I should have thought of this as soon as the trouble started brewing. That's what I'll do next time.



I KNEW William and Elizabeth would be interested in this: they're the ones who routinely sit down with craft supplies ANYWAY---special fun project or no. We keep stacked bins in the living room full of crayons, colored pencils, stickers, paper, card stock, scissors, glue, cotton balls, etc., just in case of a craft attack. And those two WERE very interested, but really they ALL were.

Five toothpastes is too many for the bathroom counter, so I divided the kids into two groups: Rob and William shared one, Elizabeth and Edward shared one, and Henry bowed out because he'd gotten a little overexcited with all the stickers and needed a lie-down.



Sticker ease-of-use report: One child (one of the 5-year-olds) had a little trouble getting the tiny letter stickers peeled off the sheets; four children (including the youngest) had no trouble taking stickers off the sheet and applying them to the toothbrush/toothpaste, as long as you are not particular about getting the stickers completely flat as directed, which I was not.


Fun-level report: all five kids LOVED this project. Sure, there was the little kerfuffle about the boy/girl stickers, but if I'd better anticipated that I could have divided the stickers differently, or had them open the toothpaste stickers at the same time. Everyone hugely enjoyed choosing the stickers and where they should go, and there was lots of happy discussion and some trading, and every child was so pleased with his/her resulting toothbrush. When I wanted them to use the toothbrushes for a photo, everyone WANTED to.



And last night, when I started brushing Elizabeth's teeth, she said, "Oh, you're using my FAVORITE toothbrush and my FAVORITE toothpaste!!"

The toothbrush head is not replaceable, so the entire toothbrush needs to be replaced when the brush head wears out; the package recommends doing this every 3 months. I have a feeling the children would be happy to decorate another by then.


The Giveaway:

There is a giveaway associated with this review:
BlogHer and ARM & HAMMER® will give away one $100 Visa gift card to a randomly selected winner. To enter, see the rules below. To enter with method (a), below, the question/prompt is: If YOU were decorating a toothbrush (as I badly wanted to by the time this project was over), are you more the "Several well-placed stickers" type or more the "PILE THEM ON!" type? (I'd be filling every square centimeter.)


Rules:

No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post (above, the part about how you'd decorate a toothbrush)

b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.


This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older, from May 12 - June 9, 2011. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. For more details, see the Official Rules.

For more information about Spinbrush:
the Official Spinbrush® MY WAY! ® site.
For more information about Orajel:
the Official Orajel® MY WAY!™ site.

For more reviews and chances to win, visit the Exclusive Offers section.