Later Kotex tampons: Fibs (started
1930s) and Comfortube (1967).
 
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Nunap and fax: the first Kotex menstrual tampons?
Maybe the first commercial tampons anywhere?
(Early-to-mid 1930s, U.S.A.)
Introduction and boxes (below)
About 1997, I think, I held a contest on this site, offering $500 to
the person coming up with the best date for the fax tampon, and another
$500 to the person sending photocopies of the most advertising for fax
(s)he had found in publications of the 1930s (or whenever).
Boy, was I excited! The ten-month or so
contest period drew down to the final weeks. Contestants were guarding their
findings very carefully, not wanting anyone else to see what they had found
and thereby giving away any advantage they had for that 500 bucks! I knew
that because so far I had not received any entries.
Well, the date for submission of entries came and went. No one sent
a thing. No one even tried, apparently, because I got no e-mail saying,
"I looked and looked! Are you kidding? Was fax even on the market?"
I write this partly to explain the uncertainty of the date for fax
(and Nunap), partly to vent at the possibly easy money that had lain there
for someone, and finally to complain that maybe no
one was even looking at this site! I'm still mad.
I've now calmed down and feel better.
I had always assumed that Fibs, which appeared
in the late 1930s, was the first Kotex tampon - does anyone else even
think about these things? - but I believe our two tampons of the hour
may have been the first, or at least very early ones. At the time of the
contest, I believed that fax might have even been the first commercial
tampon.
And now - February 2006 - I read in "Shared Values: A History of
Kimberly-Clark" by Robert Spector (1997), which K-C (the maker of Kotex)
sent me in thanks for doing research for them, that Fibs was indeed its
first tampon - at least the first one it mentions by name.
But in the early 1920s (according to the book) a young Kotex employee
stuffed a condom with Cellucotton (cellulose), the business part of Kotex,
punctured the sides of the condom and suggested selling it as a tampon.
He showed his father, the first medical consultant for Kotex. The physician
was "aghast" and told him to not show anybody because of potential
legal problems. (K-C confessed it made a huge mistake by not buying Tampax
when it was offered by Gertrude Tenderich about
10 years later.)
Kimberly-Clark, the company that allegedly created Kotex from left-over
bandages they made from Cellucotton (cellulose) for World War I American
soldiers (read their first ad), started
the Cellucotton Products Company (in Chicago) to make and sell Kotex rather
than associate the K-C name with menstruation. Later, they wrote on the
side of the Fibs box "sponsored by the makers
of Kotex," again distancing themselves from the tampon in a curious
way.
I don't know why they did it - to test the market without involving
the names of K-C or Kotex? - but my feeling is that K-C created two companies,
Neway Manufacturing Company, and Sanitary Products Company, both in Chicago
with the same address - both had "south" preceding the street
name, as did the address for Cellucotton Products Company - to make Nunap
("new napkin") and fax. (A listener to the Howard
Stern radio show I was on a few years back suggested that the name referred
to the word "facts" on some advertising for it, not reproduced
here.) I think I show convincingly that both tampons used Cellucotton for
the tampon plug (the part that's supposed to absorb the menstrual blood.)
For example, look at the crepe-like material in both tampons, here;
the book refers to the "creped wadding material that went into Kotex
pads" (p. 67). The instructions on Nunap say it does use Cellucotton
(here) and the instructions for fax
say the product is made of cellulose (here),
which is what Cellucotton is. It could be that the two companies represent
two attempts at different times to market a Kotex tampon.
You'll see in the instructions how the companies
explained to women what tampons were, and to reassure them. These tampons
were essentially little Kotex pads they inserted into their vaginas - at
least that was the pitch.
And like Kotex pads they had very coarse gauze, and even no string,
features indicating to me their position at the very beginning of the development
of commercial tampons. (Modess pads early on also used coarse
gauze.)
The Procter & Gamble company generously donated the
Nunap box to the museum as part of a fabulous larger gift;
and a woman living near Chicago, who wanted to remain anonymous, gave the
museum the fax box as well as many other early tampon items.
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The boxes are the same size and from the same company and
have identical tampons, except that Nunap is slightly larger.
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Above: The bottoms of the boxes.
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The back of the fax box, above. There was no separate
folder in the box; instructions appeared on the two paper bags inside, each
containing five tampons (see instructions).
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© 2006 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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