By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business
(CNN) -- Each pack of cotton swabs carries a warning: "Do not insert a cotton swab into the ear canal," and if you want to use it to clean your ears, gently rub just the outer part.
But extracting earwax from our ear canals is exactly why most of us buy ear swabs in the first place. The humble cotton swab was so perfectly designed for this purpose that it has become a generic term for a product.
But somehow we use it for exactly what it expressly warns us against.
'Gay Baby Q Tips'
The origins of this strange consumer phenomenon go back to the Polish immigrant Leo Gerstenzang.
In 1923, Gerstenzang reportedly thought he could improve on his wife Ziuta's method of wrapping a cotton ball around a toothpick to clean the eyes, ears, navel, and other sensitive areas of their new daughter, who was born Betty during a bath.
Gerstenzang founded a company that year to develop and manufacture the first ready-to-use sterile cotton swabs for baby care. For the next two years he worked on designing a machine capable of making swabs "untouched by human hands".
"Baby Betty Gays" was the original working name for the swabs because her daughter Betty laughed when her parents tickled her with them, according to her paid 2017 obituary . Back then, Gerstenzang ran one of the first newspaper ads about his invention in 1925. It was shortened to "Baby Gays".
Gerstenzang soon changed the brand name to "Q-Tips Baby Gays". In the mid-1930s, "Baby Gays" was dropped from the name.
There are conflicting stories behind the addition of "Q-Tips". According to a spokesman for Unilever, the consumer goods company that bought cotton swabs in 1987, the "Q" stands for "quality" and "tip" describes the swab at the end of the swab (early swabs -- the swabs were plain -- sides sold in sliding metal boxes) .
But according to Betty's obituary, "Q-Tips" was a "cutie-tips" play because she was so cute as a baby.
'Ear care for adults'
The swabs never told us to put the swabs in the ear canal to remove wax. But since its beginnings in the 1920s, it has made ear care a focus of its marketing strategy. It has trained generations of Americans to associate it with cleanliness there.
Mid-century advertisements often featured illustrations of men and women using it to wipe their babies' ears, including one showing a man wiping water from his ears after swimming.
Previous versions of the packaging listed "Adult Ear Care" as the primary product use.
Even Betty White later appeared in TV commercials for Q-Tips in the 1970s and 1980s, promoting them as the "safest and gentlest" swabs on the market for the eyes, nose and ears.
Cotton swabs are almost addictive when it comes to removing earwax, and it becomes a vicious cycle when we do it, said Douglas Backous, a neurotologist who specializes in treating disorders of the ear and skull. Removing earwax creates dry skin, which of course we then want to scrape off with a cotton swab.
Sticking cotton swabs in the ears can also damage the ear canal. Most people also don't need to remove earwax because the ears clean themselves. Inserting a cotton swab can trap earwax deeper, he said, and "you're actually working against yourself using it."
It wasn't until the 1970s, under former owner Chesebrough-Pond, that Q-Tips added a warning not to put 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 file search shows no publicly available cases of anyone with a brain sample," reported the Washington Post in 1990. "Something must have happened, and Chesebrough-Pond didn't." want. "Blame me."
But by the time Q-Tips added that warning, it was already too late. Consumption habits had become inescapable and cotton swabs controlled about 75% of the cotton swab market.
"It was just accepted that people were using it that way," said Aaron Calloway, Unilever's Q-Tips brand manager in 2007 and 2008.
"beauty assistant"
So why should you use Q-Tips? The company has several proposals. For decades he tried to emphasize the versatility of cotton swabs.
In the 1940s, cotton swabs established themselves as an indispensable tool in women's beauty and cosmetic routines.
"Mom, do you know that cotton swabs can be used for many things? ... You can use them yourself when using cream or makeup, Mom too!" Read a print advertisement from 1941.
Another print ad a decade later described Q-Tips as a "beauty assistant" for women.
Dans les années 1950 et 1960, les Q-tips began to tell ont aux consommateurs qu'ils n'étaient pas seulement destinés aux bébés ou aux femmes - ils étaient pratiques pour à peu près n'importe quel projet autour de la maison ou dans sein Life.
"To grease chainsaws and drills...guns and fishing reels...mending a cup of tea and cleaning jewelry...antique furniture," reads a 1971 ad.
Today there are no ears in the hype surrounding Q-Tips. A spokesperson for the brand states that 80% of consumers use swabs for purposes other than personal care.
The CNN wire
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