New marketing for old technologies

"Everything old is new again" and "what goes around comes around," are two redundant sayings. I repeat, they are redundant (sorry, I couldn't resist). Redundant or not, some of the newest things around aren't new at all.

For instance, the latest marketing ploy to sell toothpaste isn't a new plaque-and-tartar-fighting ingredient, nor some new anticavity additive. It's baking soda.

That's right, baking soda, the stuff cooks baked with back when they knew how to bake from scratch. It's the same stuff you stick in the refrigerator to snarf up gross food odors.

Today, just about every manufacturer offers a choice of baking soda-laced toothpaste. A new innovation? Hardly. What goes around comes around. Remember? Long ago, most people brushed their teeth with tooth powder, not paste. I say long ago, because I'm old as dirt, and I barely remember tooth powder.

As I recall, it came in metal tins