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The full episode, in writing.
In February 2012, a user named "Vincent" posted a question to the Tip.It RuneScape fansite forums about a song he remembered from his childhood. The post described a grainy, low-budget educational movie he’d seen in the late 1980s or early 1990s, featuring a cartoon cat singing about brushing teeth. He remembered the tune’s chorus—“Smile, smile, smile!”—and a bizarre sequence involving a talking toothbrush. He asked if anyone else remembered it.
By 2013, the thread had over 100 replies, with users offering lyrics, drawings, and even MIDI recreations. No one could find the original footage. The mystery gained a life of its own. Users claimed the film had aired in Canada and the United States between 1987 and 1993, mostly on local PBS stations. One user, “NeonToothpaste,” remembered watching it in a Kansas City elementary school in 1990. Another, “Neko_Smile,” described a VHS tape checked out from a Toronto public library.
The search for “Smile the Cat” became a classic lost media hunt. On the Lost Media Wiki, the entry for “Smile, Smile, Smile!” went up in August 2014, started by a user named “LostWave.” The page collected clues and witness accounts, including a partial lyric sheet from a Maryland preschool and a photo of a tape labeled “Smile Cat (PBS, 1991?)” found at a thrift store in 2015. The tape was blank.
The first major turning point came in 2016, when YouTube user “GlitchyVHS” uploaded a 15-second video titled “Smile Cat Song (fragment, 1990s).” The clip, digitized from a damaged VHS, showed a crudely animated orange cat with exaggerated cheeks singing, “Smile, smile, smile, it’s easy to do!” in a high-pitched voice. The background contained a toothbrush and what looked like a floating tooth. The upload hit 30,000 views in its first week, drawing in new searchers from Reddit’s r/tipofmytongue and r/lostmedia.
The mechanism that made this case so engaging was a mix of nostalgia and collective frustration. Unlike most lost media, where a clear studio or artist was known, “Smile the Cat” had no confirmed production credits. No one could find it in PBS’s program logs, and public library records only listed generic dental hygiene titles. The lack of studio or creator information made every small clue feel huge.
The debate over its origins split the community into two camps. One group argued it was a regional PSA produced for the American Dental Association, based on a 1989 ADA newsletter that referenced a “Smile Song” campaign for schools. Another insisted it was a Canadian production due to a 1992 Toronto Star TV listing for “Smile the Cat—Children’s Dental Special.” Neither source matched the animation style of the VHS fragment.
Fan theories started circulating in 2017. Some proposed it was a “wiped” PBS fill-in, a program aired as a temporary replacement during pledge drives. Others speculated it was a vanity project by a local dental clinic, citing an obscure 1988 Yellow Pages ad for “Smile Cat Dental Videos” from Des Moines, Iowa. None of these leads panned out with concrete evidence.
The searchers worked methodically. In 2018, an internet user named “ArchivistAva” contacted over 150 public libraries in the US and Canada seeking any VHS or U-matic tapes labeled “Smile the Cat,” “Smile Song,” or “Dental Cat.” Ava logged every response in a public Google Sheet totaling over 900 rows. The only physical artifact found was a promotional pamphlet from a 1991 dental conference in Edmonton, Alberta, depicting an orange cat mascot with the caption “Smile, Smile, Smile!” No video was attached.
Renewed efforts focused on school filmstrip catalogs. A scanned 1989 catalog from AVLine, a distributor of educational films, included “Smile—A Dental Adventure with Kitty Cat” in its listings. The runtime was 8 minutes, the format “VHS or 16mm film,” and the rights holder “White Elm Media.” No current record of White Elm Media existed. The company’s trademark had lapsed in 1994.
Multiple searchers tried copyright records. In 2019, “HomeVideoHero” filed a request with the US Copyright Office for anything titled “Smile the Cat,” “Smile Song,” or “Dental Cat” between 1985 and 1995. The office replied with a single 1987 entry: “Smile Smile Smile – Dental Hygiene Video (unclaimed).” The contact address was a PO Box in Dayton, Ohio. Letters sent to that address were returned.
The mystery attracted the attention of YouTubers in the lost media community. In April 2020, “blameitonjorge” covered the “Smile the Cat” saga in an episode viewed over 420,000 times. He recounted the details, showed the 15-second clip, and featured interviews with “Vincent,” “ArchivistAva,” and others. After the video, r/lostmedia saw a spike in new posts, and the original Tip.It forum thread passed 2,000 replies.
In 2021, a user with the handle “TapeTrader94” uploaded a scan of a 1990s VHS rental log from a defunct Nebraska video store. The log listed “Smile Cat Song (Kids) – Borrowed: 7x (1992),” with the last renter’s name erased. The store’s tapes had been auctioned in 2009. None were recovered.
The “Smile the Cat” phenomenon even drew minor academic interest. In 2022, the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information included the search as a case study in a seminar on digital folklore and collective memory. Professor Mia Beaumont presented the hunt as evidence of how online communities use crowdsourced research and digital archives to reconstruct lost artifacts.
The emotional stakes of the mystery became clear in frequent posts from users who remembered the film affecting them as children. Parents claimed their kids sang “Smile, smile, smile!” for weeks after watching the program in school. One Redditor, “ToothyTim,” wrote a 1,500-word post about how the song relieved his childhood dental anxiety.
The search also exposed the fragility of physical media and the challenges of preservation. VHS tapes made for educational markets were often recycled or discarded after a few years. Dental PSAs, produced for limited runs, rarely survived more than a decade outside of institutional archives.
In 2023, a post appeared on the Lost Media Wiki from “WhiteElmLegacy,” claiming to be the child of a White Elm Media employee. The user uploaded a scanned storyboard showing a sequence nearly identical to the VHS fragment: an orange cat, a toothbrush, and a smiling tooth. The storyboard included the lyric “Smile, smile, smile, that’s what we do!” The poster stated that their parent remembered the project but no longer had any tapes or 16mm reels.
Several searchers attempted to recreate the full song using recovered lyrics and the 15-second audio. A SoundCloud user named “SmileRebuilder” uploaded a fan-made reconstruction in late 2023. The track stitched together the known chorus, additional lines contributed by forum users, and digital instruments approximating the original synth sounds.
Despite hundreds of combined hours spent by searchers across North America and Europe, the full “Smile the Cat” program has never surfaced. The only available evidence is the 15-second VHS fragment, a handful of stills and storyboards, scattered lyrics, and testimonies from viewers who saw the film as children.
Rumors persist that a copy still exists in a forgotten school AV closet or private dental archive. Some believe a complete reel may be sitting unlabeled in a government film archive, lost among thousands of educational shorts. The searchers have not given up.
The last known attempt to locate a surviving tape was in January 2024, when “ArchivistAva” posted a call for tips on the “Obscure Media” Discord. The message received over 60 replies, but no new leads emerged.
As of today, the “Smile the Cat” mystery is considered by the lost media community to be one of the most stubborn cases in the educational film genre. Theories about its disappearance focus on the lack of centralized distribution, the short production run, and the frequent disposal of outdated school media.
The legacy of the “Smile the Cat” search lies in its ability to unite strangers across decades and continents. What began as a single forum post has grown into an enduring online obsession, complete with lost media databases, fan art, oral histories, and even musical reconstructions.
The most surprising detail surfaced in late 2025. An anonymous post on the Lost Media Wiki included a scanned Polaroid dated “April 1990.” The photo depicted a TV screen showing the orange cat mid-chorus, mouth wide, cheeks stretched, holding a toothbrush like a microphone. Scrawled on the back: “Smile, smile, smile! – Oakwood Dental Clinic.” The original tape, if it ever existed, remains missing.