How to sell Kotex, a
page for trade publications, probably early 1920s, U.S.A., and "Your Image is Your Fortune!,"
Modess sales-hints booklet for stores, 1967 (U.S.A.).
Selling Playtex tampons to retailers, 1970s.
See a prototype of the first Kotex ad.
See more Kotex items: Ad 1928 (Sears
and Roebuck catalog) - Marjorie May's Twelfth
Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many
links here to Kotex items) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal
method - box from about 1969 - Preparing
for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls) - "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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THE MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Kotex brochure for retailers, U.S.A., 1960s
"Your 'Keys' to More Profits"
As you'll discover in this glossy publication for stores that sold such
products, Kotex menstrual pads - or maybe you already knew it - were the
#1 seller in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and probably for decades before that.
I'm not sure why Kotex felt it had to go to this expense. People even today
say Kotex for menstrual pads regardless of brand just as they say Tampax
for tampon. Both were the biggest sellers in their fields from the beginning
even they were not the first.
Do you object to the profits mentioned here? Prices for commercial sanitary
napkins made poor women make or buy cloth pads
from the beginning in the same way that women had made them for millennia
before. Early Kotex advertising usually featured well-to-do
ladies, perhaps because because those women bought the magazines that
carried Kotex ads. But even women of means make their own pads today or
buy washable ones.
The publication bears no date. I deduced from the absence of self-adhesive pads, the many belts
shown within, sanitary panties, and the hair
styles that it appeared in the 1960s.
By the way, speaking of cash registers, as we soon will, let's say
they're part of the administration of a store. When the museum was open
in my house a radio station in Texas interviewed
me over the phone (stop me if you've read this elsewhere on the site).
The producer of the travel show, Johnny -, had called me up the day before
to chat and arrange the time.
The time arrived. The older-sounding male host of the travel show introduced
me something like this: "Well, folks, we have Harry Finley on the
line. He runs a museum in Washington, D.C. Harry, I was a bus-ad [business
administration] major in college and really liked those ol'-timey typewriters,
you know, the ones with the big keyboards. Do you have any of those in
your Museum of Administration?"
I thought, "Oh, God!"
"Um, it's actually the Museum of Menstruation. Menstruation, not
administration," I muttered.
"The WHAT? Johnny, you did this intentionally! What will
our sponsor say?"
I could hear Johnny laughing in the background.
But the host recovered and I got to pitch MUM. Also, the sponsor was
a camp-ground chain and the host had the presence of mind to ask me if
there was one near MUM. I didn't know.
See also How to
sell Kotex, a page for trade publications, probably
early 1920s, U.S.A., and "Your Image is
Your Fortune!," Modess sales-hints booklet
for stores similar to the one below, 1967 (U.S.A.).
I thank Tambrands, the former maker of Tampax, for donating this
brochure of its rival to the museum.
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Below: The front of the 8-page (2 covers
and 6 internal) 8.5 x 11" (20.6 x 27.9") brochure. The paper is
glossy and very thick - expensive.
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