Title: Not one size fits all
Content: First of all, I've seen a lot of people asking about this and conflicting answers - this WILL NOT work with the large tip Hello brand toothpaste. The silicone hole looks like it's too small, but it will fit most normal tubes, you just have to push and turn. The threading will bite into the silicone and when you take it out, it's self-healing. No amount of pushing will get the really wide tube in - trust me, I tried. I'm not the type of person to accept defeat, ha, so I tried several fixes, below. Let me pause here to explain my rating. I tried the dispenser with a regular toothpaste tube and it's messy, but workable. The inability to use different sizes of tubes, though, made this totally unusable for us. Kids are the group most likely to need this and their toothpaste tubes are the least standard. I would gladly pay an extra dollar or two for more than one size silicone insert. So minus .5 star for the messy, minus 1.5 stars for inability to use our toothpaste. First thing to know is that you can really take this whole thing apart. Some reviews say you can't, but pop the front off, pull the pushy arm (technical term) out by bending it slightly to get the pegs out of the sides, and pull out the central mechanism. You can pull the silicone out, too, if it's really dirty, it's kind of hard to get out, I used a fork prong stuck in the middle to lever it out. Okay, so my first attempt to get the Hello toothpaste to fit (after sweating over trying to jam it in with great force at several angles was unsuccessful) was to enlarge the silicone hole. This is some quality, firm silicone. It is really hard to cut. I finally succeeded by using a razer blade to score some spots vertically, flipping the silicone inside out, and slowly shaving away pieces. The problem was that I could not get the inside cylindrical hole completely vertical again. It was a slightly funnel shape and although the toothpaste fit at the top, the slope of the silicone caused more pressure on the tip which unscrewed the tube and popped it back out. I couldn't cut much more away without risking holes that would harm the vacuum. Maybe there's a way to do it with better tools or a Dremel or something. Attempt two involved trying to prevent the silicone from popping out the tube. I got some heavy-duty rubber bands and strapped the toothpaste tube on top, both with the tube slightly screwed into the silicone and just flush on top. Unfortunately I couldn't get the tube to stay upright. After a few seconds some rubber band would pull unevenly and the tube would tip, destroying the vacuum. Poo. This did give me an idea, though. Hello tubes have a lid that screws on the threading with a flip-top portion to open and squeeze out toothpaste. For attempt three I cut the top off of the Hello tube, leaving only the part that screws on. I then used food grade adhesive to attempt to glue the Hello lid to the silicone. I reassembled the mechanism without the silicone and then slid the silicone insert down into the mechanism from the top until the Hello lid was flush with the plastic. The silicone was not all the way in place, but was far enough to create the vacuum. In theory, new tubes of Hello could then have their lid removed and screw into the glued lid. The problem - no glue would stick to the silicone. After numerous drying-time waits, the silicone popped right off each time. Perhaps epoxy would work, but I didn't have any handy. So in the end, the dispenser, mangled from my attempts, went into the garbage largely unused and I'm still in search of a Hello brand solution :( Perhaps my attempts will give someone else a workable idea!
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