Tooth care

Did you see “Real Genius”? Remember Lazlo Hollyfeld, teh guy who lived in the closet and entered lots of sweepstakes? Well that’s what Karen is doing — entering Internet contests in her spare time. And, like Lazlo, she won.

Not quite as much, though. What she won was a toothbrush. But not just any toothbrush: The Oral-B Triumph, possibly the ultimate home-dental-care appliance on the planet. (With a name like “Triumph,” it kinda has to be. How do you go up from there — the “Triumph with Extra Credit”?)

First of, if you wanted to buy the thing at, say, Amazon.com, you’d have to shell out $110. For a toothbrush. The thing comes with two separate heads, one for brushing and one for polishing. It has four separate settings: Clean, Soft, Massage, and Polish. You can choose the mode yourself, but if you pop on the polishing head the brush switches to polish mode automatically.

It not only tells you when you’ve brushed the recommended two minutes, but has separate 30-second timers for each quadrant in your mouth. Seriously. And, of course, it tells you when you need to charge the battery, and when you need to change the brushhead.

It does this in 13 languages. Yes, I’m serious. (English, German, Danish,
Dutch, Suomi (?), French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian,
Korean, and Japanese.)

I’ve got a $5.00 battery-powered toothbrush that I like a lot, but ever since Karen’s has been in the bathroom I could swear mine has been inching across the counter, away from the newcomer, strictly because it’s intimidated. I sure am.