It started out as an April Fools joke, but thirteen Taranaki residents were able to have $1 visits to the dentist this morning.

Happy Teeth Dental Practice offered the extraordinarily cheap visits between 9am and 12pm for the first customers through the door.

Practice Manager John Dowker said the idea started out as an April Fools joke...

"We thought, no we can't really do that to people, and the dentist said he'd like to give something back to the community," Dowker said.

He says customers lined up as early as 5am and received a range of different treatments.

Dowker says one lady had a surgical extraction done - saving her hundreds of dollars.

"If we were doing that under a normal clinic, she'd probably pay about three-hundred dollars for it," Dowker said.