 
|
MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Kotams first Kotex stick menstrual tampons
(Kimberly-Clark Corp., maker of Kotex
menstrual pads, panties,
belts, educational booklets),
1960-65, U.S.A.
The Kimberly-Clark company had failed with its first successful tampon,
Fibs, as well as with its shadowy predecessors
Moderne Woman, fax, and Nunap.
Now it wanted to try again to bite a mouthful out of Tampax,
the leader then and now.
This maker of Kotex, the menstrual pad leader,
thought that women would find using a stick
to insert a tampon simpler than using Tampax's ancient, large tubes.
The company introduced Kotams in 1960 but by 1965 found that it had
earned too little money for the effort. Women had rejected
another Kotex tampon.
But the next year it reintroduced the stick idea under another
name, with cheaper production cost and with a great
ad campaign. This tampon lasted longer.
(Some of this information comes from "Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies:
Kimberly-Clark and the Consumer Revolution in American Business," 2004,
by Thomas Heinrich and Bob Batchelor. In the Acknowledgments, the authors
kindly called this museum Web site "a treasure
trove of information.")
Hi Harry.... It's me, the former teacher and contributor **** at a
new email address.... I read your comments about the stick tampons with
interest and I can only tell you from my perspective and experience what
was wrong with them....to be honest they were easier to insert and the
stick was not actually attached it was just in a recessed area of the tampon
so to remove it after insertion was even easier than the cardboard tubes
that would sometimes be more difficult if you hadn't completely gotten
the tampon out of the tube etc......but at the same time when you opened
the tampon wrapper the stick sometimes had fallen out and you would have
to replace it in the spot and worse when it had been dislodged it often
was bent or broken....the tampon itself didn't have the protection of that
tube....none of that was a problem straight from the box at home nor was
it if you used a hard plastic tampon case to carry it in your purse but
the reality most of us just threw a wrapped package in our purse and went....we
weren't staying home with the tampon box in the 70's.....rolling around
in the bottom of your purse with the loose change and lipstick the wrappers
would tear a bit sometimes, the stick would bend or break and the tampon
itself was not protected the way it is in the tube until ready to use.....the design was great and easier to use fresh out if the
box but not durable enough in the way women were actually transporting
them and using them.
It really would be helpful to ask a woman
sometimes when designing products. [Read what the ad man for early Kotex
wrote about women writing ads for Kotex.]
I thank the former Tambrands for donating the
box!
|
Below: The box measures 6 x 3 x 1"
(15.5 x 7.6 x 2.5 cm) and is enveloped with
cellophane. That fleur-de-lis-like design - a touch of class with the gold
- looks like
rows of menstrual cups. Maybe Kotex had them
on their competitive minds
since cups were then reappearing among the U.S.
public.
Flowers have a long, ironic association
with menstruation.
|
 |
Below: Kotex was trying to lure women away
from Tampax, the leading tampon by far.
The company pushed the idea that stick tampons were
SIMPLER (see ad for its second stick tampon)
to use but women didn't buy the idea and Kotex replaced THIS stick
tampon with another.
Kotex slaps Tampax by calling it ordinary -
that's a drawing of a Tampax at right.
I wonder if the stick subliminally frightened women:
a sharp stick impaling the uterus or ripping the vagina?
"Modern" might have been a way to
reduce Tampax's advantage of having been around
since the
beginning of commercial tampons in the early 1930s; Kotex's first
successful tampon had failed.
|
 |
Below: The sides and ends are gold
and darker than the front and back. The opposite side is identical.
|
 |
Below: The other end is identical.
|
 |
NEXT | tampon - instructions
© 2009 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
of the work on this Web site
in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please
report suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org\
|