NY Daily News:

Crest stunt, down the tubes

When Crest toothpaste teamed up with the cast of "The Apprentice 2" for a promotional stunt on Tuesday, it was supposed to be a marketing coup for the corporate dental-care giant.

But instead, the action in Washington Square Park, where Donald Trump had assigned contestants to hawk tubes of the new Crest Whitening Expressions Refreshing Vanilla Mint, in scratch-and-sniff boxes, descended rapidly into street theater.

It was, in fact, a disturbing and unnerving scene not calculated to enhance any brand - not Crest, not "The Apprentice" and not Trump.

A spy tells Lowdown that after handing out tube after tube of the decay-preventing dentifrice to passersby, the "Apprentice" team enlisted a plump 51-year-old woman to haul the unsightly empty boxes back to a nearby truck and haul back armsful of sparkling-new boxes.

For this, they offered her $20.

As the woman lumbered from the table to the truck and back - "working her a- off," says our spy - she was overheard mumbling, "I have to do a good job for Crest."

After about an hour, she had worked herself into a beet-faced, sweaty daze. At one point she tumbled over and began to roll around on the ground, chanting "Crest! Crest!" over and over.

"It was just spooky," said our spy.

Finally, while the "Apprentice" folks stood by watching, an off-duty EMT worker and an onlooker picked up the distressed woman and carried her back to the truck. But as soon as they had deposited her in the driver's seat, she started to shake - "It looked like she was going into cardiac arrest" - and suddenly passed out cold, falling limp into the passenger side.

When she finally awoke after a full three minutes, she promptly vomited and demanded, "Where's my money?"

At which point Trump Organization exec Carolyn Kepcher, the icy blonde muse of the reality-TV hit, swooped in and demanded to know which idiot had recruited the hapless worker.

Somehow we doubt that such unorthodox business practices will play well in the boardroom.

Kepcher didn't respond to Lowdown's detailed messages, nor did Trump or the corporate flacks for Crest.

Lowdown hears "The Apprentice 2" production team's many cameras caught the incident in its horrific entirety.