After the stimulating husband-and-wife collaboration, you might not look at the design classic in the same way again, says Stephen Bayley

Psychologists have discovered an essential truth that they have passed on to marketeers: we attach special significance–and award significant loyalty–to products we put in our mouths. 

Personally, I am surprised that a lab-tested, peer-reviewed sequence of experiments was necessary to test this commonsensical truth. Best, surely, to know the track record of your chosen source of oral gratification. But it does, at least partially, account for the fact that a popular version of the toothbrush is known as "extra firm."

And it may explain the extraordinary Japanese anime cult series Nisemonogatari, one episode of which shows a young woman brought trembling to cartoonish heights of pleasure by her young man who is... brushing her teeth. In Aroch and Palma's fetishized account, a covert narrative of obedience and discipline is evident–as is the occult erotic element of dental hygiene.  

Whose mind has not wandered when the white-coated, rubber-gloved hygienist has two hands, a suction pump and a surgical steel scaler in your mouth and, from behind his or her mask, asks about your plans for the weekend?

When I was a boy, there was a terrible novelty tune by the English variety performer Max Bygraves called “You’re a Pink Toothbrush, I’m a Blue Toothbrush;” the lyrics to this awful, grating, sing-along number suggested marriage between the colorful toothbrushes, thus confirming the unexpected romantic associations of this everyday implement.

But, while its familiarity may drain it of a little mystery, in reality there is nothing everyday about a toothbrush. The history of hygiene, especially of dental hygiene, is a meta-history of human advancement; that we have progressed from the Babylonian chew stick (a distressed piece of bamboo) to an ergonomically designed, thermoplastic, blister-packed marvel of bathroom status is as much evidence of evolution as the fact that we use text and no longer carve messages on bark.

The materials of the toothbrush also speak of man's lofty ambitions as realized in the creation of small things. While the first ‘modern’ toothbrush (possibly imported from China) is mentioned by an Oxford antiquarian in the late 17th century, it was in 1780 that the tool we know today came into being. So the story goes, Englishman and rag-maker William Addis came up with the idea while doing jail time (for starting a riot, no less): he drilled holes in an animal bone, blagged some tufts from a warder and created a modern archetype. The company founded by Addis now sells the Wisdom brushes you buy in [iconic British pharmacy] Boots.

If asked to testify before The Great Architect of the Universe about human achievement, I would cite the toothbrush's evolution from tufts of pigs’ bristle to synthetic fibers, of bone handles to plastic, to make my case. Parents still tell their children: "Brush your teeth!" And the significance of this cannot be overstated.

Stephen Bayley is a London-based cultural critic, journalist and author.