Designed by Yu-Hsin Lin, Chu-Che Chang and Shang-Hsuan Lu, the Tooth Guardian would have a tiny CCD camera on the backside of its head, capturing a real-time image of your teeth and gums as you brush. An LED ring encircles the camera lens and automatically turns on when you place the toothbrush in your mouth.

The toothbrush would wirelessly transmit its images to an LCD screen built into your mirror, so you can see how good a job you’re doing keeping your choppers pearly white.

By installing the camera on the flip-side of the head, it allows the bristles to be easily replaced, but means you won’t see the surface you’re brushing right now, but what you need to brush when you flip the toothbrush over. Still it’s a great idea for making sure you’re doing a good job when brushing. When done, the Tooth Guardian stows in a handy UV sanitizer to help kill any extraneous germs.

While the Tooth Guardian design was a recipient of a 2011 red dot design concept award, there’s no word on if or when it will be produced. However, everything here is readily available technology, so I don’t see why someone can’t bring these to market sometime soon.

However, given that it’s a completely new design for the tube, it might take a while before toothpaste companies start applying it to their tubes. So if you can’t change the tube, you might as well do something about the brush.

That’s what Catherine Werdel was thinking when she came up with the tube squeezing toothbrush. Below the neck of the toothbrush is a thin slot where one of your toothpaste tube can go through to push the paste out.

I always find it interesting when people come up with ways and means to try and get the most out of something instead of letting it go to waste, even if it’s just a little thing. Because, really, if you put it all together, in the end, it will amount to a whole lot.

[via Fancy via Oh Gizmo!]

When my baby teeth began falling out, my mother scared me into thinking that it was because I hated brushing (which is, technically, true) and I freaked out with her exaggerated stories (I was going to be toothless by age 30, she said) so I got my act straight and became a religious brusher ever since.

However, for those people who have yet to learn their lesson, the Misoka toothbrush is here to save you and your mildewy teeth.

So what makes this plain-looking toothbrush so special? Well, its bristles are coated with a nanomineral that will not only remove all the gunk from your pearly whites (or uh, yellows) but also leave a hydrophilic coating on your teeth to prevent any detritus from sticking to your teeth.  In normal-people speak, hydrophilic means “water loving” (or in this case, saliva loving) and detritus refers to all those tiny particulates that give you cavities and sore teeth if you don’t keep them away (in short, teeth gunk.)

Unconvinced? Check out this video about the Misoka toothbrush:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Imagine all the water and toothpaste you’ll be able to save by just having to brush just once a day! The thought of brushing with that (in)frequency doesn’t sound very appealing to the adult me, though. The Misoka toothbrushes go for $15 a pop from the Hiroshi Beverly Hills Salon. Get a-nano-brushing today!

[via DigInfo]

This thing would make an awesome travel brush, assuming it comes with something to keep the head covered from the suitcase goo that floats around in my bag. The brush has what appears to be a syringe inside with marks in cc’s. To dispense the toothpaste you twist the bottom and the plunger is moved up squirting the paste out directly onto the bristles, using precisely as much as you want.

It holds 3.4-ounces of the paste, which will get you by the touchy-feely TSA folks without having to throw it away. The concept is called the Twist & Brush and comes from Spanish designers Awamura-ganjavian. The coolest part is that you can buy another tube of your toothpaste and refill the dispenser rather than having to toss it out and buy a completely new brush.

[via FastcoDesign]

The Zapi uses ultraviolet light to clean your toothbrush “in minutes”. Let’s hope that’s not more than 5 minutes. Since we can’t see the actual cleaning process, Zapi bobs enthusiastically as proof of the intense 99.9% cleaning action going on inside. It has a removable drip cup so you can easily clean it. So what cleans your teeth? Your toothbrush. What cleans your toothbrush? Zapi. Who cleans Zapi? You. Someone invent a Zapi Zanitizer.

The VioLight Zapi toothbrush sanitizer sells for $30 USD at Amazon. As you can see it comes in 4 colors, and includes a free matching toothbrush. It runs on three AAA batteries, not included.

[via 7Gadgets]

This crusty crustacean toothbrush holder comes to us courtesy of the Plywood store on Japan’s Rakuten online mega-mall. While hanging onto your ceramic tile with a sucker fit for an octopod, the aptly named CRAWFISH holds onto your toothbrushes with a grip that only a deep-sea creature could have.

They cost just ¥714 each (appx.$6), which means that you’ll end up spending more shipping them from Japan than what they cost. But for a statement in bathroom decor that’s this great, it’s worth it.