Later Kotex tampons: Fibs (started 1930s)
and Comfortube (1967).
 
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Nunap and fax: the first Kotex menstrual tampons? (early-to-mid
1930s, U.S.A.)
The tampons
The Procter & Gamble company generously donated the Nunap box
to the museum as part of a 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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Above: Each Nunap
box held two of these translucent packages of five tampons each.
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Above: The fax
box contained two of these packages, paper folded over, on which the user
read the instructions (readable view).
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The ends of the tampons look similar.
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I peeled part of the gauze covering off the Nunap. Pads of
the time often had a similar gauze covering that women complained about
and mentioned in the Gilbreth report.
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Nunap is a bit longer. The user pulled on the loose gauze
at the bottom to withdraw the tampon. The gauze "string" on the
fax is about 4 cm. ( about 1.5") long (about the length of Nunap's),
much shorter than the usual string of today.
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Below: After taking the gauze off, both
'pons look similar, leading me to believe that fax in fact is also
made of Cellucotton (cellulose), the absorbing component of Kotex and made
by Cellucotton Products Company, which Kimberly-Clark created to sell Kotex.
In effect they are little Kotex pads inserted into
the vagina.
What convinces me is the crepe-like material
in both tampons; "Shared Values: A History of
Kimberly-Clark" (by Robert Spector, 1997) refers to the "creped
wadding material that went into Kotex pads" (p. 67). Cellucotton also
comprised another K-C product, Kleenex. And see creped
wadding in the K-C company history, Four Men and
a Machine.
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© 2006 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
of the
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