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.)
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 an 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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