A Brooklyn drugstore and a family dental business.

Sensodyne came out of a family company that began behind a pharmacy counter. The Guardian, reporting in October 2000, described Block Drug as established in 1907 by a pharmacist, Alexander Block, who opened a drugstore in Brooklyn, New York. The New York Times, in its 2005 obituary of his son Leonard N. Block, gives the same starting point: an immigrant pharmacist trained at Columbia University who opened a single drugstore in Brooklyn in 1907.

The business moved away from retail within a generation. The company history published in the International Directory of Company Histories says Block became a wholesaler by 1915 and a drug manufacturer by 1925, when he bought a half-interest in Wernet’s Dental Manufacturing Company. Through the 1930s the company grew by acquisition and moved into dental care, which became its most profitable business. In that decade it also developed Polident denture powder, the product that, according to the Times, was Block’s leading brand for decades and gave rise to Poli-Grip. Block Drug has been based in Jersey City, New Jersey, since 1938, the Times says.

Leonard Block took over the company in 1953, the same company history says, and the business kept the habits of its founder: heavily advertised brand names and slightly differentiated products. In the 1950s, it says, Block Drug made early use of network television commercials to turn its products into household names. A former product manager is quoted as saying the company could “hide in the bushes, then … push a button and TV would sell the product.”

It was into this business that Sensodyne arrived. Haleon’s own history timeline records that in 1961 “Sensodyne, a toothpaste to reduce the sensitivity of teeth, is launched by Block Drug.”

From Block Drug to GlaxoSmithKline and Haleon.

Block Drug stayed in family hands even after it became a public company. The company history records that it incorporated in 1970 and placed shares on the market the following year, and The Guardian noted in 2000 that it had joined the New York stock market in 1971. The same report described it as family controlled and chaired by Alexander Block’s grandson, James Block. By then its products included denture cleansers and adhesives, mouthwash and Sensodyne, alongside non-dental lines such as Nytol and Tegrin.

The sale came at the turn of the century. The Guardian reported on 7 October 2000 that the Block family had appointed Goldman Sachs four months earlier to advise on “strategic options”, and that SmithKline Beecham, the owner of Aquafresh, was lining up a bid for Block Drug, “the US manufacturer of Sensodyne”. The paper quoted an analyst, Bill Blair of Nomura, saying Sensodyne would “fit in a different market sector to Aquafresh”. SmithKline Beecham was then in the middle of merging with Glaxo Wellcome; Haleon’s history dates the creation of GlaxoSmithKline to 2000 and records that in 2001 GSK acquired Block Drug, “including Sensodyne, Polident and parodontax”. The Times obituary likewise says the family sold the company in 2001 to the London-based GlaxoSmithKline.

Under GSK, Sensodyne became part of a consumer health business that later grew through joint ventures with Novartis and Pfizer. English Wikipedia notes that in Japan the brand is marketed under the name Shumitect. Haleon’s timeline adds that a Sensodyne mouthwash was launched in 2015.

The last change of owner was a separation rather than a sale. In July 2022, Haleon says, it was listed as an independent company on the London and New York stock exchanges, taking GSK’s consumer health brands with it. Haleon traces its own roots to a London apothecary shop opened by Silvanus Bevan in 1715, and today names Sensodyne among its flagship products, in an oral health portfolio alongside Polident and parodontax, the two other brands its history names in the Block Drug purchase, and Aquafresh.

Design and documentation.

Toothpaste and mouthwash brands are seen up close, every day, and usually for only a few seconds at a time. A tube sits on a basin, a bottle sits beside it, and a box is glimpsed on a crowded pharmacy shelf. Their identities tend to be carried by a few repeatable signals: the colour of the tube or carton, the shape and weight of the name, and in some cases the look of the product itself.

Colour does much of the work. Many oral-care names are tied to one strong pack colour, and a shopper often reaches for that colour before reading a word. Toothpaste adds a second surface that most packaged goods lack, the paste or gel squeezed onto a brush, which some brands have made part of their look with stripes or tinted gels. Mouthwash goes further still, because the liquid is visible through a clear bottle and its colour becomes part of the pack.

Each guide in this group looks at who started the brand, who owns it now and how its look has been described over time, and separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself.

A specialist name in a family of owners.

Sensodyne’s identity rests first on its name, which tells shoppers what the product is for before any packaging does. Haleon’s timeline describes the 1961 launch in exactly those terms, as a toothpaste aimed at sensitive teeth, and the company history of Block Drug calls it a desensitizing toothpaste. When it changed hands in 2000, The Guardian reported that Sensodyne, aimed at people with sensitive teeth, did not compete directly with SmithKline Beecham’s own Aquafresh, which the paper described as a lower-priced, high-volume brand.

The brand’s background also explains its tone. Block Drug was a pharmacist’s company that, by the company history’s account, built its products on heavy advertising, slightly differentiated formulas and television and Sensodyne grew up alongside Polident and Poli-Grip in that business. Haleon, which now owns it, describes itself as a consumer health company and groups Sensodyne with Polident and parodontax under oral health, so the brand still sits next to the denture-care names it shared a home with at Block Drug in Jersey City.

The brand has also travelled under more than one name. English Wikipedia records that Sensodyne is sold as Shumitect in Japan. Around the core toothpaste the range has widened; Haleon’s timeline lists a Sensodyne mouthwash from 2015.

For a design guide, Sensodyne shows how a specialist name carried from a family company into GlaxoSmithKline and then Haleon can keep its place on the shelf through three owners: the name, the promise it describes and the pharmacy register have been the constants. Compare it with Aquafresh, the SmithKline Beecham toothpaste it joined in 2001, and Biotène, which Haleon’s timeline says the company acquired in 2008. For this guide we use tube blue and signal red on enamel white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sensodyne’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.