It is likely that the previous taste may have been disagreeable to others. Most larger companies with new products use groups or panels of people of various backgrounds to taste samples of potentially new products. This could be one reason why the taste changed that the tasting panel indicated the new flavour was preferable to the previous flavour.
It is also possible that Colgate are standardising their product line so that the same product is sold in multiple international markets. If this is the case, Australia’s market is very small compared to most other developed and developing nations and these other nations tastes may be met rather than that which is traditionally Australian.
The third…have you recently started taking any new medicines or had other lifestyle changes. These can affect the taste receptors in one’s mouth making things change different. It may not be the toothpaste which has changed flavour.
And the fourth, they could be adding a new ingredient to the previous toothpaste to add to its efficacy as a wonder tooth cleaner. Many toothpastes have a wider range of ingredients with each generation and more claims of what it does to ones teeth. Some of the claims were outlined in this other thread…
In relation to flavours, Australian’s seem to prefer a mint flavour (common mint, peppermint, spearmint) where other countries often have a range of different and alternative flavours. In our travels we have seen green tea, mango, chocolate, lemon, licorice, curry etc flavours, We have tried a few and most aren’t to my personal taste…but expect they would be sellers in the other countries otherwise they wouldn’t be sold. The only one which was ‘passable’ was the lemon one as it left the mouth feeling clean, a little like mint toothpastes. I expect the feeling of clean is psychological rather than real as a flavour wouldn’t affect the brushing outcome…
