And, of course, the first Tampax AND - special
for you! - the American fax tampon,
from the early 1930s, which also came in bags.
See a Modess True or False? ad in The American
Girl magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley
in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many dates).
 
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Beauty in box design
Embossed Wix (1930s) & Kotex (1967) menstrual tampon boxes, U.S.A.
It's surprising to find menstrual products with a "classy"
feature like embossing - raising part of the surface, which costs more money
and which we usually associate with carved jewelry or fancy invitations.
But why not? Modess pads published a beautiful series of ads for decades
starting in the late 1940s that usually featured glamourous women in fashionable
gowns, and very few words (see here).
The style could have been used to conceal the contents; the Wix box,
below, has no indication on the front and sides of the tampons within. The
Kotex box, more modern, does. But it uses an embossed flower to prettify
the product, a use of flowers that has a long history, including the word
flowers, although that derives from an unexpected source (more on the words page).
A woman in the Chicago area kindly donated the Wix box and many other
items, like fax; her father sold Kotex products
as a representative of the company. Tambrands generously donated the Comfortubes,
part of a large gift of menstrual products from
its archives.
Harry Finley created the images.
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