See early tampoms Wix and B-ettes
and a bunch of other earlier ones.
See some Kotex items: First ad
(1921) - ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog)
- Lee Miller ads (first real person in amenstrual
hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday
(booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here
to Kotex items) - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s,
booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing
disposal method - box
from about 1969 - "Are you in the know?"
ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) -
See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page

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Nunap menstrual tampon, U.S.A., early 1930s
The Nunap tampon might be the fax tampon, possibly the first
commercial tampon; look at the identical drawings (below)! And both have
the same manufacturer's address, although
different company names.
Note, too, that the tampon is made of Cellucotton, which Kimberly-Clark
created and made for bandages in World War I and then later made for Kotex.
It then sold Kotex from its subsidiary company, Cellucotton Products Company,
located in Chicago, which is where so many other early tampons were headquartered.
And as demonstrated by the creation of Cellucotton Products Company, Kimberly-Clark
was not averse to creating separate companies for its products.
Did K-C make Nunap and fax before it produced the Fibs tampon
in the late 1930s? If so, the company could claim to have made the first
widely successful disposable menstrual pad in the United States as well
as probably the first commercial tampon!
As with the fax, there are no dates on any of the material, but
I suspect both were made in the early 1930s. And the name Nunap probably
is short for "new napkin," using the same reference to a napkin,
not a tampon, that fax uses, probably because the public would not
have known what a tampon was. The company name, Neway, emphasized this newness.
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Instructions in Nunap box
(above). See interior pages at bottom of
this page.
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Back of fax box (above); drawing
is identical to top drawing.
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Inside of Nunap instructions (above). Cellucotton
was a product of Kimberly-Clark.
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See early tampoms Wix and B-ettes
and a bunch of other earlier ones.
© 1998 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
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