Colgate Toothpaste What's the main royal pain in your morning and evening bathroom regimens?  Never mind, I'll answer that for you.  It's the gunking up of toothpaste on top of the toothpaste tube so you can't squeeze any more of the stuff out until you cut off the top of the tube!   Here we are in the 21st century performing all kinds of technical wizardry and we still can't get the darn toothpaste out of the tube!

Well, here's a competition you can sink your teeth into.  Through Edison Nation, Colgate-Palmolive is holding a competition for the most innovative oral care solutions and, in its announcement it dropped three or four hints that it wouldn't mind a solution for the dispensing of toothpaste:

• "Within its world-leading Oral Care division, Colgate’s customers most commonly complain about the difficulties of toothpaste dispensing. Whether it’s a suggestion to discover a way to completely squeeze out the tube contents or frustration over the messy build up that accumulates around the nozzle, customer feedback declares that they want better toothpaste solutions.

Forget about modifying Colgate's toothpaste products; they won't have it. Just find a way to cleanly dispense the toothpaste and get all of the toothpaste out of the container to the user in a protectable, aka patentable, device.

As usual, I warn you about knowing your rights before you submit anything.  If you scroll down the Edison Nation Colgate competition page, you will find links to the agreements you will need to sign under:

• Where can I download and review the legal agreement for Live Product Search? and
• What is in it for the inventor/innovator?
  

The deadline for entries in May 24, 2010, 11:59 Pacific Time.  Good luck.  I really hope one of our readers invents the solution!