[kwanbix]

I call it the Toothpaste Dilemma: When you go to buy toothpaste, like Colgate or most brands, you're bombarded with so many options. It gets worse when you read the labels—everything seems either identical or has massive overlaps. It's frustrating and unnecessarily complicated.

[JohnBooty]

When you see this, particularly on supermarket shelves, this is a deliberate attempt to crowd out other brands.

You're focusing on the micro ("WTF is each one of these ridiculous micro variations?") and not on the macro (Colgate is absolutely dominating that aisle, and fully 75% of the toothpaste choices are Colgate while Crest and Aquafresh fight over the scraps)

    It's frustrating and unnecessarily complicated.

This is also by design, more or less. If you give up and "just grab one" you're pretty likely to pick a Colgate, since that represents 75% of the options available and it's also one of the oldest and therefore most "trusted" brands. You can't exactly go wrong with a Colgate, right?

Of course some people will rebel, and say "screw Colgate" and pick some other brand, and some people will just literally pick the cheapest option no matter what.

But again, if I'm Colgate or whatever their parent company? I absolutely love the way that toothpaste aisle looks. 75% of it is Colgate Red and I bet the sales figures hew pretty closely to that.

[kwanbix]

I imagine it works if they are still doing it, but I think is worst. As soon as a brand comes with simpler naming, it can steal your customers.

[rs999gti]

> I call it the Toothpaste Dilemma

It's called Tyranny of Choice - https://longevity.stanford.edu/the-tyranny-of-choice/

> Too many options can decrease the likelihood of making any decision at all

[kwanbix]

Good to know, thanks! :)

[legitster]

I legit use the term "Toothpaste Shopping" to describe any miserably complex shopping experience.

(Although ironically, toothpaste shopping is quite easy once you know the correct answer is "the cheapest brand at the store that has fluoride in it")

[extraduder_ire]

Unless you're looking for some other feature. Once I learned what novamin was, I started getting a toothpaste with that in it. I think only two such brands exist.

[cam_l]

>everything seems either identical or has massive overlaps

Whenever I find marketing copy like this, I use it to filter out the whole company's product lines. This heuristic never fails, because I don't even know what I am missing out on.

[yndoendo]

This is dependent on your filter.

I try not to buy big brand / mega corporate products. No Colgate or Crest and both own a number of the less known brands, those are out. This leads to only one or two options to choose from.

This is why I look at products manufacture not just their name.

I would really like website like https://isitbigbeer.com/ to help filter out all products and brands that hide behind multi-naming schemas.

[chrismcb]

Toothpaste shopping is easy. I pick the one brand that has a convenient non tube toothpaste (actually there are two, but I didn't like the taste of one) I thing I didn't understand is there are only about 6 of the non tube options and 1000 of the tubes. Do people really like to roll their toothpaste out of a tube?