See early tampons
and a list of tampon
on this site - at least the ones I've cataloged.
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Secret menstrual tampons (1930s-1940s?,
U.S.A.)
Box
The odd-looking - is it her haircut?
- "shushing" woman embodies one of the
two main things most women seek in
menstrual products: concealment
(the other is comfort;
just my opinion. Read about a 1927 survey
about this. And see the consequences
of letting a male, especially, know
that you are menstruating in a Kotex ad.)
Yellow screams
for attention, at odds with the
desire for secrecy on the
manufacturer's part. When I
was the art director of a magazine in
Frankfurt, Germany, I fastened our
past issues to the wall for
decoration, and the yellow covers
always grabbed my attention first.
This is one of the many early
American tampons that had no insertion
devices, such as the Tampax tube, a
lack I think contributing to its
disappearance. To me, that was the
genius of Tampax (patent and
history and one of the first
examples).
Procter & Gamble kindly
donated the box and contents as part
of a gift of scores of menstrual
products.
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Nowhere can the buyer
find the number of tampons inside
(10), just as with Cashay
tampons! The company assures her it's
an "average month's supply" (lower
part of box, above).
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Side of box
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End flap: Tampon
companies wrote "No
belts,
pins, pads," or variations
thereof, on their boxes and in their
ads for decades, addressing many
women's complaints about menstrual
pads. Read more of their complaints,
and doctors', too, in the roughly
contemporary Dickinson
Report.
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Below is a sample tampon.
The box measure 2.25" x 0.75" x 0.75"
(about 5.7 x 1.9 x 1.9 cm) and
contains the same instructions the big
box does (here).
The remaining sides have no text.
A transparent cellophane wrapper
encloses the 'pon, whereas the large
box has a translucent wrapper.
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© 2001 Harry Finley. It is
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