But extracting mud from our ear canals is exactly the reason most of us buy Q-tips in the first place. The modest Q-tip was so perfectly designed for this purpose that it became a common word for a product. And yet we somehow use it for what specifically warns us not to do it.
The origins of this strange consumer phenomenon can be traced back to Leo Gerstenzang, an immigrant from Poland.
In 1923, Gerstenzang suggested that he could improve his wife Ziuta’s method of wrapping cotton around a toothpick to clean the eyes, ears, navel, and other sensitive areas of their newborn daughter Betty while bathing.
In the same year, Gerstenzang launched a company to develop and manufacture the first ready-made sterilized cotton swabs for baby care. For the next few years, he worked on designing a machine that could produce tampons “untouched by human hands.” “Baby Betty Gays” was the original working name for the tampons because daughter Betty laughed when her parents tickled her with them, according to her paid obituary for 2017. At the time Gerstenzang ran one of the first newspaper ads for her invention in In 1925, it was shortened to “Baby Gays”.
Gerstenzang soon changed the brand name to Q-Tips Baby Gays. By the mid-1930s, “Baby Gays” had been removed from the name.
There are competing stories about where the “Q-tips” add-on comes from. According to a Unilever (UL) spokesman, the consumer goods conglomerate that bought Q-tips in 1987, “Q” means “quality” and “tops” describes the cotton swab at the end of the stick (the first swabs were one-sided, sold in sliding sheet metal boxes).
But, according to Betty’s obituary, “Q-tips” was a Cutie-Tips game because she was as cute as a baby.
“Adult ear care”
Q-Tips have never told us to stick tampons in our ear canal to clear earwax. But from the very beginning in the 1920s, he made ear care a key focus of his marketing strategy. This has trained generations of Americans to associate it with cleaning there.
Mid-century advertisements often include illustrations of men and women cleaning their ears or their babies’ ears with them, including one depicting a man removing water from his ears after swimming. Older versions of the boxes indicated “adult ear care” as the primary use of the product. Even Betty White later appeared in TV spots for Q-tips in the 1970s and 1980s, promoting them as the “safest and softest” pads on the market for your eyes, nose and ears.
Q-tips are almost addictive to being used to clear wax, and this becomes a vicious circle when we do it, said Douglas Bekas, a neurologist who specializes in treating ear and skull diseases. Removing earwax creates dry skin, which we then want to scratch with – of course – a Q-tip.
Sticking the Q-tips in your ears can also damage the ear canal. Most people don’t actually have to remove earwax either, as the ears clean themselves. Putting a tampon can catch the earwax deeper inside, he said, and “you’re actually working against yourself by using it.”
It wasn’t until the 1970s, with the previous owner of Chesebrough-Pond, that Q-tips added a warning not to stick the thing in your ear. It is not clear what caused this change.
“The company has no details as to why they did this, and our search of the records did not reveal any known cases of someone with a brain swab,” the Washington Post reported in 1990. “Something must have happened and Chesebrough-Pond’s did not want to be blamed. . “
But when Q-tips added this warning label, it was too late. Consumer habits became impossible to break and Q-tips controlled about 75% of the cotton swab market.
“It was just accepted that people used it that way,” said Aaron Calloway, Q-tips brand manager at Unilever in 2007 and 2008.
‘Beauty Assistant’
So what should you use Q-types for? The company has several proposals. For decades, she has been trying to emphasize the flexibility of cotton swabs.
In the 1940s, Q-types were positioned as a major tool for women’s cosmetics and beauty routines.
“Mom, do you know that you can use Q-types for many things? … You can also use them yourself when you use cream or makeup, mom too!” read a print ad from 1941
Another print ad, a decade later, described Q-tips as a “beauty assistant” for women.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Q-tips began to tell consumers that they were more than just babies or women – they were convenient for almost any project in the house or in their lives.
“For lubricating chainsaws and drills … pistols and fishing reels … repairing a tea cup and cleaning jewelry … Antique furniture,” reads a 1971 ad.
There are no ears in Q-tips advertising today. A spokesman for the brand says that 80% of consumers use Q-types for purposes other than personal care.
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