Out of the corner of my eye, I caught this ad featuring a beautiful young woman dancing in close embrace with a handsome young man and as drew closer:
BINGO:
I am suddenly introduced to a new product. A toothbrush, actually two of them packaged together, each with a dab in the middle of the bristles of Johnny on the spot toothpaste. And this toothpaste was apparently so juicy that using it does not require the adding of water. So much for carrying around in your bag a toothbrush and a cumbersome tube of toothpaste and bottle of water. What with it being so juicy, one doesn’t even head off to the bathroom, but brush behind a bush maybe and spit on the ground or something.
Talk about your convenience.
I guess the fear of halitosis runs deep. That’s an odd word, halitosis. I don’t hear it much any more. We now say, quite openly, “bad breath.” But at one time, I think, the word served to suggest something sort of scientific that required a sort of scientific cure, like Listerine. Indeed, the Listerine people made it up by combining words from Greek and Latin. They devised a disease and gave it a scientific name.
For a long time now, women especially have been subjected to advertising suggesting that halitosis is just god awful and may completely ruin one’s social life.
One ad shows a man and a women in embrace with the line “Till breath do us part.” So bad breath is like death and possible grounds for divorce. Once again the ad is directed a women, suggesting that they especially must be concerned about emitting foul odors.
Below, we find that poor Milly catches the bridle bouquet. She should be next in line to wed but her friends know otherwise and they know why too. Milly has bad breath. But she doesn’t know it.
Poor, poor Milly. Damn!
So there you are with a constipation so intense that you suffer loss of appetite, early weakness, nervousness, and mental dullness, but what you are really, really worried about is halitosis.
But that was about it.
