Ipana ( /aɪˈpænə/) was a very popular toothpaste in the 20th century with its famous Disney-created mascot named Bucky Beaver joining the Ipana marketing efforts in the 1950s.
Ipana was first introduced in 1901 by the Bristol-Myers Company of New York. Ipana was an early and large sponsor on radio starting in 1923 with the program The Ipana Troubadors. Ipana toothpaste achieved its greatest popularity from the 1920s until the early 1970s. With its renowned wintergreen flavor, the active ingredient was sodium fluoride (0.243%). Bristol-Myers's Ipana was the most popular U.S. toothpaste or powder from approximately 1920 to the late 1950s.
Sales of Ipana waned by the early 1970s due to increased marketing efforts from Procter & Gamble, Colgate, and others. Colour television was increasing in popularity, and Bristol-Myers was uninterested in investing in new colour television programming material. Bristol-Myers was making far more money in pharmaceuticals so Ipana and other brands were given up by the sales and marketing teams.
By the late 1970s, Ipana was discontinued entirely in the United States, but was sold elsewhere in the world. In 1986, a new gel version of Ipana containing two fluorides was introduced in Turkey.[1] In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago-based brand revitalization company, re-introduced Ipana into the U.S. marketplace. At present, the Ipana brand is a leading toothpaste in Turkey.
River West Brands divested itself of Ipana in October 2009. River West sold the Ipana brand and related IP to maxill inc. of Canada. Maxill, one of the top three selling toothbrush makers in Canada, formed plans to bring Ipana back to life in early 2011 as a "retro brand" in the professional dental market, where maxill had come to dominate the oral hygiene category by that time.
Bucky Beaver (voiced by Jimmie Dodd) was the marketing icon and mascot of Ipana commercials from the 1950s. Bucky Beaver's slogan was "Brusha... Brusha... Brusha. Get the New Ipana - it's dandy for your teeth!"
A well-known scene in the movie-musical Grease features the character Jan (Jamie Donnelly) singing the jingle along with Bucky Beaver during a television commercial: "Brusha, brusha, brusha! Get the new Ipana! With the brand new flavor - it's dandy for your teeth! Brusha, brusha, brusha! New Ipana toothpaste! Brusha, brusha, brusha - knock out, decay germs fast! Fast! Fast - you're sure all right!"
Under the name Frances Westcott, Frances Bergen, wife of the famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and mother of actress Candice Bergen, worked for the influential Powers Modelling Agency and her face appeared as 'the Ipana Girl' in toothpaste ads in magazines.[2]
Actress Phyllis Brooks was known as the Ipana Toothpaste Girl because of her association modelling for the product.
The 1991 Looney Tunes special Lunar Tunes showed a brief snippet of an Ipana commercial during a segment where Marvin the Martian is showing supposed evidence of the mistreatment of extraterrestrials by the media as justification to blow up Earth.
Allen Ginsberg, before becoming a revolutionary beat poet and counterculture icon, worked on the "Brusha, brusha, brusha" campaign as a market researcher.[3]
The brand was also featured in the film Blast From The Past when the main character, played by Brendan Fraser, leaves belongings behind in his hotel room, including a tube of Ipana toothpaste.