The wintergreen-flavored toothpaste, with active ingredient 0.243% sodium fluoride, reached its peak market penetration during the 1950s in North America.
From 1934 to 1940, the brand sponsored The Fred Allen Show, which ran under the names The Hour of Smiles and Town Hall Tonight.
Television ads at that time proudly proclaimed that this ingredient made Ipana superior to competitive toothpaste brands in germ-killing power.
[2] In the 1950s, Bristol-Myers saturated women's periodicals with a broad-based monthly ad placement campaign for Ipana.
Maxill extended the Ipana name to other dental products such as prophy angles, topical anesthetic and bamboo toothbrushes.
[7] In an interview with Shel Dorf for the National Cartoonists Society he said he learned to draw pretty girls via the ads he did for Ipana.
[10] The jingle is referenced in a scene in the 1978 film version of the musical Grease (which built upon a passing line mentioning Bucky Beaver in the original stage musical), and subsequently appeared in a live televised version, for which the production acquired the performance rights.
[11] The toothpaste is mentioned in the 1999 movie Blast from the Past: a family mistakenly lives underground in a fully stocked private nuclear bomb shelter after a jet plane crash during the Cuban Missile Crisis.