See the Pursettes booket for teenagers (late
1950s?)
See more 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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Pursettes menstrual tampon (1950s-1970s,
U.S.A.)
Campana Corp., Batavia, Illinois
Advertisers for Pursettes aimed
at the teenage-girl
market in the U.S.A. in
the 1950s through the 1980s. Like
o.b. and now some other tampons,
and like the earliest
tampons, it had no insertion
device; women pushed them in with
their fingers. But that was
probably its weak point; American
women as a group want as little
contact as possible with their
genitals, especially when
menstruating. Just try to sell menstrual
cups in the U.S.A., or even
elsewhere; an Australian menstrual
cup from the 1980s failed quickly.
Pursettes's uniqueness was a lubricated tip,
which would help girls, probably
virgins, to penetrate a possibly
unfamiliar orifice, and one
narrowed by a hymen. See an ad
showing a letter from a happy
customer mentioning this: ". . . I was afraid I
might break a membrane or
something." Or something?
Another ad
sold the black, classy tote, right
below, which an enthusiastic
customer mentions in her testimonial.
In spite of everything,
Pursettes flopped, perhaps
challenged too hard by the much
bigger - not in tampon size, but
in company clout - o.b. tampon,
which Johnson & Johnson bought
from the German company Dr. Carl Hahn
GmbH (GmbH means Gesellschaft mit
beschränkter Haftung,
"company with limited liability,"
that is, a corporation) in the
1970s.
Speaking of Dr. Hahn, Germans,
much more than Americans, are
impressed by academic degrees, and
there is even a large chain of
pornography stores in Germany
called the Dr. Mueller Sex Shop.
See the Pursettes
booket
for teenagers (late 1950s?).
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See ads
for Pursettes: September
1972 (letter testimonial) -
August 1973
(letter testimonial) - February 1974
(cartoon story) - August 1974
(cartoon story) - October 1974
(cartoon story)
See more ads
for menarche-education booklets: Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday
(Kotex, 1933), Tampax
tampons (1970, with Susan Dey), Personal
Products (1955, with Carol
Lynley), and German o.b. tampons
(lower ad, 1981)
See also the booklets
How shall I
tell my daughter? (Modess,
various dates), Growing up
and liking it (Modess,
various dates), and Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday
(Kotex, 1928).
And read Lynn Peril's series
about these and similar booklets!
See another ad for
As One Girl to Another (1942), and
the booklet
itself.
© 1999 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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