iBrush — Hasbro's Revolutionary Musical Toothbrush
Published February 25, 2005
They're going to call it "Tooth Tunes."
When you brush your teeth, you hear music.
Hilary Duff's about to sign on — she might even write an original, two-minute-long song you can only hear while brushing with the iBrush.
Andrew Recke, her music manager, told Joseph Pereira, in today's Wall Street Journal story, "Hilary's into clean living."
Hey, so am I — where's my endorsement? But I digress.
The two-minute recordings played by the brush are stored on a microchip the size of a dot atop the letter i.
Push a button on the brush and a microcomputer starts playing the song.
Sound waves are then transported through the brush's transducer to the front teeth, traveling from there to the jawbone and then to the inner ear and brain.
People standing near you hear only a hum.
Launch is slated for later this year.
Hasbro hopes this effort will pan out better than "Sound Bites," its 1999 venture which offered a sugar-free lollipop that played a song when pressed against the teeth.
Perhaps the fact Sound Bites cost $10 — a pop — made it less than a sweet deal.
For an additional $3 Hasbro tricked-out Sound Bites with a mini FM radio that attached to the end of the lollipop stick, but even with that enhancement it crashed and burned.
Next, Hasbro thought about putting their Sound Bites technology into forks and spoons, but decided it probably wouldn't work out since every time you removed the implement from your mouth to prepare another bite, the music would stop.
Then they thought about using a pen as a delivery device, but figured kids wouldn't suck on a pen for the duration of an entire song.
I think, by George, that this time they might have hit pay dirt.
- iBrush — Hasbro's Revolutionary Musical Toothbrush
- Published: February 25, 2005
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- Section: Culture
- Writer: bookofjoe
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What I really want to know is how you hack them to have dialogue from "Marathon Man" instead.
"Is it safe?"
So Hilary Duff's gonna be inside my mouth, singing?
Hasbro demostrates the idiocy of business acumen at its best
They need to put Snoop Dogg on one of those musical toothbrushes.
** Yo, yo,
Pimpin' hoes,
Slappin' bitches,
My wheels spinnin' **
And those lyrics demonstrate the destruction of language and poetry
Relax, Aaman, it's a joke.
"Hi, this is Hylairie Duph, I'm glad you're brushing your teeth, and as a reward, when you're finished, call 19995551212 with mommy or daddy's credit card number and expiration date for special super-sekrit message!"
ludlow..your crap...who wants to stand by their toothbrush after brushing their teeth to hear a song?!...i dont like u...
I got one of these musical toothbrushes and i hacked it apart to see how it worked and this thing will power pretty much any speaker you got lying around, rig it to a stereo speaker and you get pretty good sound, I have the beach boys fun fun fun one, i took apart the head and theres 2 wires going to the speaker in the brush head i removed the speaker and the head so i just got the handle with the 2 wires on it and the white lever that adjusts the volume and i have a hard drive from a computer rigged into a speaker and the toothbrush powers that as well, ok why spend 10 bucks to hack apart a toothbrush, umm i like hardware hacking ok? i might collect these things and rig then to hook to any speaker and i may record the music as an mp3
If you want to see this rig in action I got it up on youtube hope you enjoyrd this hack
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This is nothing new. A company called "Orawave" already have a musical toothbrush on the market. It has a replaceable head, a 2 minute timer, twin heads and plays music only AFTER the person has brushed for the full 2 minutes - a reward. And it sells for less than $6. Dentists recommend you change your brush heads every 3 months and since Hasbro's brush heads cannot be replaced, you will need to shell out $10, 4 times a year! 4 replacement head for the Orawave only cost about $8 TOTAL. Hasbro's is a bad rip-off of the Orawave brush.