My fantasy toothbrush washes dishes. What does yours do? Dr. Fresh wants to know. Dr. Fresh is really Puneet Nanda. He is the inventor of today’s No. 1 kids toothbrush in America: The FireFly. It’s a toothbrush that blinks for one minute so that children are hypnotized into scrubbing until the cavity creeps are banished. Now the Cerritos man (pictured below) is holding a national
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contest, challenging kids to invent THEIR fantasy toothbrush. Second to fifth graders must send him their toothbrush design by Feb. 1. The winner gets a weekend with one parent at Disneyland, a $500 bond and a tour of the Dr. Fresh Factory in Buena Park. This is the third year Nanda is holding the contest. Last year’s winner was a 9-year-old South Carolina girl who designed a toothbrush that speaks, reminding people to turn off the tap while they brush to save water.
“Their brains are fertile,” Nanda says of the children. In fact, it was his daughter who gave him the idea for the FireFly. Muskaan, now an eighth grader at Tetzlaff Middle School in Cerritos, was a reluctant brusher back in first grade (a few years after the family arrived here from India). One time he told his daughter they had to go somewhere. She said she would only go if she could find her favorite sneakers, the ones with lights on the sides that flashed. A bulb went off in Nanda’s head. He went to Disneyland, bought a few pair of blinking magnet earrings and attached them to her toothbrush with invisible tape. She took the toothbrush, ran to the sink and eight minutes later she was still brushing. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great psychological compliance I’ve created,’” Nanda says.
Now Nanda makes not just toothbrushes (his Boppin’ Barnyard hits stores this spring) but other dental products, generating $50 million a year in sales. He bought Binaca last month from a bankrupt New Jersey company.
So what’s with the name? Well, when he was in medical school in India, he admits, he was fresh with the girls. Classmates called him Dr. Fresh. Fifty million in sales from a fluke brainstorm? I’ll call him Dr. Brilliant.
