Kotex's second stick tampons (U.S.A.) & its ads, 1960s to 1970s - Comfortube tampons (1967), box, tampons - the very early Kotex Moderne Woman, fax, Nunap, & Fibs, all 1930s.
"Remember how simple life used to be?" ads for the second stick tampon. - a Japanese stick tampon from the 1970s.
Early commercial tampons - Rely tampon - Meds tampon (Modess)
The first Tampax
Tampon directory.
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Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.


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.")

A generous contributor to this museum (see one group of her donations) writes:

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.]

Kotex's second stick tampons (U.S.A.) & its ads, 1960s to 1970s - Comfortube tampons (1967), box, tampons - the very early Kotex Moderne Woman, fax, Nunap, & Fibs, all 1930s.
"Remember how simple life used to be?" ads for the second stick tampon. - a Japanese stick tampon from the 1970s.
Early commercial tampons - Rely tampon - Meds tampon (Modess)
The first Tampax
Tampon directory.
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
Kotex's second stick tampons (U.S.A.) & its ads, 1960s to 1970s - Comfortube tampons (1967), box, tampons - the very early Kotex Moderne Woman, fax, Nunap, & Fibs, all 1930s.
"Remember how simple life used to be?" ads for the second stick tampon. -
Japanese stick tampon from the 1970s.
Early commercial tampons - Rely tampon - Meds tampon (Modess)
The first Tampax - Tampon directory.

© 2009 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work on this Web site
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