Grush is a smartphone connected Bluetooth toothbrush that allows you or your children to play games while brushing your teeth, using the brush as the controller.
Grush was created by a startup and hopes to help people develop good toothbrush habits through games that make sure they’re brushing in the right mouth areas for the right amount of time. The Grush comes with a smartphone holder that can be stuck to your bathroom mirror and any of the Grush-compatible games that you choose can be controlled with the brush while you’re brushing your teeth.
The brush is $59 and each brush head is designed to last for three months with replacement heads costing $5 each. While the brush isn’t cheap, it is cheaper than many of the connected brushes on the market and the majority of the companies that make them don’t develop games for the bathroom. One of Grush’s cofounders Ethan Schur worked at Electronic Arts before founding the company. He says that the brush will begin shipping in June of this year and will then be available in shops.
The Grush brush and app has a dashboard where you can track scores. The dashboard can also send data to dentists that sign up to the Grush program so that they can check on your or your children’s brushing habits. While the brush is designed to encourage children to brush their teeth, the product has yet to go through clinical trials that will determine whether it can improve the dental health of children who use it. A good outcome from the trial will also help the brush to win the approval of the American Dental Association.
The interactive games created by Grush encourage brushing for 30 seconds per mouth quadrant and with the proper technique for tooth and gum health. The games reward the user for using the right technique, motivating children and providing them with a Grush factor that measures the consistency of their brushing. The score is accessible through the dashboard and is also uploaded to the cloud.
The games available for the toothbrush run on an app for both iOS and Android. These include Monster Chase which encourage children to chase away monsters that are hiding in the teeth and can be expanded with add-ons. Toothy Orchestra provides interactive instructions that use the brush as a conductor’s wand and allows users to play music by brushing their teeth correctly, and Brush-a-Pet features virtual animals such as Gavin Giraffe which can be groomed and looked after over the course of a year through tooth brushing.
Grush would not only help to encourage children to brush, but can also be used by parents to reward their children for brushing correctly as they can use the parental dashboard to make sure each child has been brushing twice a day and for the recommended time. Visual results are a useful way for parents to see quickly how effective the Grush games and brush are. A version of the brush marketed towards adults is currently in development as well as a flossing aid that will encourage more in depth flossing by using the phone app.
The Grush may sound like a novel product, but it certainly isn’t the first connected toothbrush and isn’t even the first to offer games for children. The Kolibree brush $199 uses sensors to detect brushing habits and a smartphone app to encourage children to bush correctly with games such as Go Pirate. Go Pirate rewards children by allowing them to move forward and collect coins when they use the right orientation in the right areas of the mouth. In addition, the small Rainbow toothbrush $39.99 connects via Bluetooth to an app which shows children an animation of the inside of their mouth so they can follow instructions to brush correctly to collect points and prizes. In a similar vein, the PlayBrush $75 is a controller which fits onto any toothbrush and allows the user to overcome obstacles in a game and earn points with their brushing technique. If the child brushes incorrectly, they will lose points and will see that they are not playing correctly through the graphics. Further to this, large toothbrush brand Oral B has opened its software up to third party developers meaning new apps will be available from October this year which could include games for both children and adults.
