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someday soon we will be sucking our music

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"Everything is media." - Geoffrey Moore

Monday, February 28, 2005

From Ringtones to .....What? Singing Toothbrushes

Got a Song Stuck In Your Head? Try Brushing

By JOSEPH PEREIRA

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

February 25, 2005; Page B1

Toy maker Hasbro Inc. has been trying for more than six years to find a use for its clever invention of a pea-size device that transmits sound through enamel and bone.

At first, the company tried marketing the technology in a lollipop that, when sucked, would play a catchy tune. But parents choked on the $10 price tag, and the product was discontinued. Unwilling to give up, Hasbro considered spoons, forks -- even pens -- that would play a musical ditty in the mouth. Those ideas never made it out of the lab.

Now, Hasbro has a product it thinks it can take to the bank: a musical toothbrush. When pressed to the teeth, the toothbrush renders a recorded riff from a pop star that lasts two minutes -- precisely the amount of time dentists say children should spend brushing their teeth. Hasbro plans to highlight that advice in marketing for the new toothbrush, which also has a suggested retail price of $10.

Called "Tooth Tunes," it's getting a thumbs-up from dentists. Children tend to brush their teeth for only a few seconds, says Ed McLaren, associate professor of dentistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Most kids have no idea how long two minutes is."

Hasbro is in talks with several recording artists about getting rights to their recordings. Many artists would probably consider a gig in a toothbrush beneath their talents. But others might welcome the daily exposure in their young fans' lives. Hasbro says it got a green light from Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group, a major hip-hop publisher, to approach some of its artists. Among the "upbeat" songs Hasbro says it is considering are "What a Wonderful World," "Wild Thing," "Walking on Sunshine" and a new rendition of the 1960s classic "Do You Believe in Magic" now getting a lot of play on the Disney Channel.

Among the recording artists Hasbro is currently talking to are the actor-singer Will Smith, rhythm-and-blues band Black Eyed Peas and pop-music queen Hilary Duff. Mr. Smith hasn't signed a long-term agreement but Hasbro has requested a license to use his hit song "Switch," says Dave Capper, a Hasbro project manager. A lawyer for Black Eyed Peas confirmed that negotiations are ongoing, but declined further comment.

Andre Recke, Ms. Duff's music manager, was initially skeptical but now says it is "likely" his 17-year-old client will strike a deal. "When Hasbro came to me, my reaction was 'Yeah, Yeah, so it's just a toothbrush,' " Mr. Recke says. "But then, I listened to it, and I went like 'wow.' " He says he may even persuade Ms. Duff to write an original, two-minute composition to help with the Tooth Tunes launch. "Hilary's into clean living," he says. "She would like to convey to kids that, 'Hey, I may be Hilary Duff, but I have to brush my teeth too.' "

Modern computer technology makes the Tooth Tunes possible. The two-minute recording is stored on a microchip no bigger than a dot atop the letter i. Push a button on the toothbrush, and a minicomputer starts playing the song. Sound waves are transported through the transducer to the front teeth, traveling from there to the jawbone and then to the inner ear.

In 1998, Andrew Filo, an inventor-consultant to Hasbro working with a crew of six company engineers, devised and promptly patented a "dental mandibular sound transducer." When pressed against teeth, the tiny contraption powerfully propels sound waves through the incisors and mandibles into the inner ear.

"The human jaw bone is a great conductor of sound," says Mr. Filo, who says he has long been fascinated by the movement of sound through the facial structure. As a child, he says, he used to close his ears and wonder how he could hear himself hum. He came up with the idea for Tooth Tunes one morning while brushing his teeth.

The sound produced by Tooth Tunes is, for the person brushing, a cross between the sound of music coming out of a stereo speaker and the sound of humming to oneself. The transducer's sound waves don't travel efficiently through air, so someone standing near the person brushing hears only a hum, similar to the sound of the Walkman on a fellow passenger in a train.

As currently envisioned, each Tooth Tunes brush would come with just one song. When the brush wears out, the whole thing must be replaced at a cost of another $10.

The launch of Tooth Tunes is planned for later this year, in time for the back-to-school shopping season. But Hasbro will find itself competing in an increasingly crowded oral-care aisle. Its top rival will be Procter & Gamble Co., which has agreed to acquire Gillette Co., maker of the top-selling toothbrush line, Oral-B. P&G and Gillette together had about 49% of the total toothbrush market in 2004, according to retail sales tracker Information Resources Inc., whose data don't include figures from Wal-Mart stores.

Still, retailers are interested in Hasbro's Tooth Tunes. CVS Corp, the nation's largest pharmacy chain, sells 116 different types of toothbrushes, including 88 manual and 28 battery-powered models. It says it would like an exclusive on the product. It is negotiating with Hasbro but exactly how much lead time CVS can get ahead of rivals hasn't been determined. "We plan on putting Tooth Tunes in all 5,300 of our stores," says Mike Bloom, senior vice president of merchandising. "That's a big risk, but I really feel this brush is here for the long haul."

Hasbro's first crack at commercializing the technology began in 1999 with "Sound Bites," a sugar-free lollipop that played a tune when pressed against the teeth. For an additional $3, music fans could get a mini FM radio to attach to the end of the lollipop stick. Hasbro discontinued the products after selling a combined total of about two million.

Engineers canned the next idea -- putting the transducer into forks and spoons -- after it occurred to them that the music would stop between bites and so discourage normal eating. The pen idea, too, seemed a little impractical. "Expecting a kid to suck on a pen for the duration of an entire song was asking much," says one company insider.

Tooth Tunes is an opportunity for Hasbro to diversify out of the shrinking toy industry. Instead of going to toy stores, Hasbro is hoping to sell the toothbrush through drugstores, supermarkets and discount retailers. One of the company's Asian suppliers is making the product, which Hasbro is aiming at children age three through teens -- a demographic group it knows well.

But success is by no means assured. The youth toothbrush market is already chock full of character-themed and battery-powered electric products. P&G had a substantial hit with its Crest SpinBrush that retails for around $5. A kiddie version featuring Spider-Man scaling a building rang up nearly $4 million in sales, according to Information Resources Inc. Another Crest brush, featuring cartoon character Dora the Explorer, logged retail sales of $3.3 million.

--Charles Forelle and David Armstrong contributed to this article.

posted by Bruce at 12:41 AM Comment (1) | Trackback

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Edited by alocispepraluger102
GA Russell Mentor

GA Russell

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LOL @ Jim!

It seems to me that most kids would get sick and tired of the same song every day. Maybe the parents would buy four at a time for an outlay of forty bucks, and the kid can rotate the brushes depending on the song he wants to here today.

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