Pink tube, green tube, powder, strip: underneath they're all the same thing, a water soluble polymer in a petroleum jelly base. It's printed on the back of every box. That chemistry makes two close surfaces tacky. It has no way at all to span an empty gap.

So it sits on top of the space and tries to seal it with stickiness, and your saliva dissolves it in three or four hours. That's the midday failure every brand shares. Swapping tubes changes the colour, not the result.

It fails differently top and bottom. The top plate has the whole roof of your mouth to seal against, so cream gets some grip there, until a bite into something firm levers the back of the plate off the palate. The bottom is a thin horseshoe on a ridge with your tongue in the middle. No suction, nothing to help. Once there's a gap under it, there is nothing for it to hold against at all. That is why so many people say the top is fine and the bottom never was.

Restora Labs isn't a glue. It's a thermoplastic cushion. You warm the tube in your hand for about a minute, run a thin line along the underside of the plate where it meets your gum, press it in and bite gently for thirty seconds. Under a minute from start to finish. If it comes out a bit thick at the front the first time, take it out and go again. Most people get it right on the second go.

As it cools it conforms to the exact shape of the space under your plate and firms up into a soft layer. The plate finally has something solid to press against instead of a smear of paste. That is a different approach to the problem, not a stronger version of the same one.

A bigger gap isn't a problem for it. It is simply more space to fill. The people who notice the biggest difference tend to be the ones whose ridge has gone the furthest, the ones who'd stopped wearing the bottom plate to eat.

Because the liner stays put rather than dissolving, most wearers redo it every two to three days instead of three or four times a day. One tube covers weeks of wear, so the tube in the coat pocket and the excuse between courses both go away.

It has very little taste. At night it peels away from the plate in one piece, so there is nothing to scrape off your gums or out of the plate. Rinse and done. The formula is zinc free, and because it sits as a soft layer between plate and gum, it cushions the sore spots a rocking plate rubs into the ridge.

Don't expect fireworks. It doesn't feel like anything, because there is nothing to feel. The plate just stays where it's meant to. Most people notice it the first time they catch themselves eating something they'd given up on.

A dentist's reline works, because it fills the gap. But it fills it with hard acrylic shaped to your jaw on that one day, and the bone keeps going, so within a year or two you're back in the chair. A private reline runs around £100 and more at many clinics, and the NHS wait can be months. Implants start in the thousands. This is the soft kind of reline, done at your own sink, and because you redo it every few days it follows your ridge instead of being left behind by it.

No pharmacy tube ever gave you two months to check its '12 hour hold' against a Sunday roast. Restora Labs does. Use it for sixty days, the steak, the apple, the long phone call, the toffee at the cinema. If it doesn't hold, send it back for a complete refund.

Most people order one tube to start. Those who come back usually take the three for two, one for the drawer and, more often than you'd think, one for a husband or sister who swore theirs was fine. Check the product page for current availability before you decide. The 60 day money back guarantee applies to eligible orders.