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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A box of Society menstrual napkins
(American? 1920s-1930s?)
Were the manufacturers trying to
elevate the tone of their
embarrassing product by calling it
Society? (See San-Nap-Pak
pads for another example of
this.)
Early Kotex ads always featured
middle-class-and-above
women, but that's who its
clientele was. Maybe that was the
case here.
The box bears no patent or
trademark information; you see
below all the writing that appears
inside and out.
Is it American? The graphics
look as if they come from the
1920s or 1930s, obviously from an
English-speaking country.
The pad
itself matches
exactly the size
of the first Kotex pad, which
probably indicates the size
necessary for the usual belt.
(See some belts from
today.)
See the pad.
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Above:
Outside end flap. Whoa!
It would have been a
cruel trick indeed if
the pads had not
been absorbent!
Left:
The largest face of the
box. It's possible women
bought the box already
wrapped to conceal what
was inside. Several
museum visitors,
children of druggists or
pharmacists, told me
that they
helped their fathers
wrap Kotex and other
pad and tampon boxes
as kids to spare the
customers
embarrassment.
Some companies shipped
their boxes already
wrapped in plain paper.
The box
measures 9" x 7.5" x
3.38".
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Right:
Inside end flap.
Plumbing always
challenged pad and
tampon makers. Early
Kotex instructions also
directed women to flush
pads (see a Spanish
language booklet),
and, later, other
companies made
"flushable"
products.
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© 1999 Harry
Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or
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