Kilmer House

To help everyone cool down in the end-of-summer heat, Kilmer House brings you ten cool things from our archives.  Enjoy!

1. A 1927 price list that belonged to Earle Dickson, inventor of the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage.  The pages inside have handwritten notes by Dickson and, yes, his invention is listed, on page 11.  Here’s the page that was most meaningful to Earle Dickson, with his handwriting.

2. A Zonweiss ad from 1887, the year after Johnson & Johnson was founded.  This one shows figures from Ancient Roman mythology discussing the merits of Zonweiss tooth cream, the Company’s first consumer product.

 3. Perhaps the earliest ad for JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, from the 1890s, the decade the product was first introduced.

4. A wire mesh splint designed by Revra DePuy, the founder of our operating company DePuy, Inc.  DePuy, Inc., founded in 1895, was the world’s first-ever orthopaedics company.  Before Revra DePuy’s fitted splints, doctors used the staves from barrels, among other things, to splint broken limbs.  This one was designed for an arm.

5. A tin from Seabury & Johnson, Company founder Robert Wood Johnson’s partnership before Johnson & Johnson.

6. Two very old LISTERINE® Antiseptic bottles, circa the very early 1920s.  These bottles are small — only about four inches in height.

7. Fred Kilmer’s analytical balance, which he used in our laboratories starting in 1889.

8. The Johnson & Johnson factory whistle from 1901, when all of the Company’s operations were in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  It’s said that the whistle could be heard for miles in the towns surrounding New Brunswick.

9. The Company’s secretary and head of sales A. R. Lewis (L) and scientific director Fred Kilmer (R) getting creative by posing for a medicated plaster ad over 100 years ago.

10.  And finally, how did Johnson & Johnson employees stay cool before air conditioning was invented?  Fans!  Here’s a picture of some of our, well…biggest fans from earlier years.

Does anyone out there collect Johnson & Johnson vintage memorabilia?  We’ve shared some of the coolest items in our Company archives.  Which one do you think is the coolest?  And what cool things do you have in your collections?  Let me know!

A Design Classic!

1.  What do BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages have in common with the @ symbol on your computer keyboard?  They’re both part of the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Here’s the link to the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage entry on the MOMA design collection website.  (By the way, because the product is in the collection of an art museum, Earle Dickson, the inventor of BAND-AID®, is listed as the artist on the site!)

2.  There was a fourth Johnson in the early days of Johnson & Johnson!  William Johnson, a relative of Company founders Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson, was listed as being in charge of the Company’s facilities in Highland Park, New Jersey – right across the river from New Brunswick.  Here’s a photo from our archives of one of the Highland Park buildings he managed:

The Old Suspensory Mill in Highland Park, New Jersey

3.  Decades ago, we built a plant in Texas that was completely underground.  Here’s a photo.

Strange But True:  We Have an Underground Plant

4.  Two very popular consumer products from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies started out as surgical products.  Can you name them?  LISTERINE® Antiseptic and the K-Y® Brand of products.  LISTERINE® was first formulated in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic, and the K-Y® Brand — originally including an analgesic (K-Y® Analgesic) and a surgical lubricant (K-Y® Lubricating Jelly).  What else do they have in common?  They both joined the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies as part of an acquisition:  LISTERINE® was part of the acquisition of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare in 2006, and K-Y® was part of our acquisition of a small company called Van Horn & Sawtell in 1917.  Van Horn & Sawtell made sutures and other surgical products.

Early LISTERINE® Bottles and K-Y® Analgesic

5.  We once had a building in New Brunswick that had stained glass windows representing the different departments in Johnson & Johnson.  The windows were created especially for the Company, and each window pictured a different employee selected to represent his or her department.

6.  Johnson & Johnson has something in common with the Empire State Building and the Louvre. And that would be…architects.  In the 1930s, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architectural firm that had just finished building the world’s tallest building when it was completed in 1934 – the Empire State Building, was hired to build the one-story Personal Products Company plant in Central New Jersey.   So what about the Louvre?  I.M. Pei, the architect who built the modern glass and steel entrance to the Louvre, also designed and built our World Headquarters in New Brunswick, and the headquarters of our Consumer operating company, also in New Jersey.

Charles Heber Clark:  Board Member and Humorist

7.  In the early days of Johnson & Johnson, a member of our Board of Directors was ranked alongside Mark Twain as a writer and humorist, and he even may have inspired Twain to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.   That Board member was Charles Heber Clark, who wrote under the pen name Max Adeler.

Joyce Kilmer: Poet, Author, Soldier…and writer for Johnson & Johnson

8.   And while we’re on the topic of writers, Joyce Kilmer, the famed World War I poet and son of Company scientific director Fred Kilmer, wrote articles for some early Johnson & Johnson publications.  It would have been hard for him to refuse…his father was the editor!

Dr. Grosvenor’s Bellcapsic Plaster:  if the package looks like a cigar box, that’s because it was originally a cigar box!

9.  The Johnson brothers were very resourceful when it came to packaging the Company’s early products.  In our early days, Johnson & Johnson bought cigar boxes from the local cigar box manufacturer in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to use as packaging for some of our medicated plasters.

And if observant blog readers have noticed that these jars look like fruit jars, they would be absolutely correct!  There was also a fruit jar manufacturer in New Brunswick, and we bought jars from them to package some of our sterile dressings.  Why?  Because the jars could be hermetically sealed to keep the dressings sterile.  Besides reinventing existing packaging over 100 years ago, we also were one of the very first to use a strange new packaging innovation from another local manufacturer that’s now a standard — collapsible tubes.  Here’s JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap in a collapsible tube.

One of the historic LISTERINE® ads used in the documentary

This is a little different from the topics I usually post about, but my colleagues at our consumer operating company recently did a really cool documentary about LISTERINE® Antiseptic, and they asked me to be in it to talk about some of the early history of the product.  Actor Neil Patrick Harris is the narrator, and if you go to the This is Your Mouth site to watch it (which is why I’m not embedding the video here!), not only will you get to hear a certain blogger, but – more important – our operating company that makes LISTERINE® will donate $1.00 to America’s Toothfairy®, a national U.S. non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating pediatric dental disease (the leading chronic childhood illness), and making sure children receive comprehensive oral health care.  Johnson & Johnson has been a promoter of oral health for almost 125 years (our very first price list included an oral health product– a tooth cream).  So please go to this link to watch the video:

Here’s the link:  http://www.thisisyourmouth.com/

Some of the most beautiful and appealing ads in the history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies are the historical ads for JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder.  One of the most popular of those ads – and still a favorite today — is the Wonderful Mother ad from 1922.  But did you know that the ad was inspired by Abraham Lincoln?  Read on to find out why.

The Wonderful Mother ad appeared in the leading magazines of its day, such as Women’s Home Companion.  The centerpiece of the ad is a beautiful illustration of a mother looking down at her sleeping baby.  Her arm is protectively around her other child.  The ad conveys nurturing, trust and comfort, and perfectly captures the parent-child bond and the love between the mother and her children.   

So what did all of that have to do with Abraham Lincoln? 

Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States…and the inspiration behind one of our most popular ads.

Believe it or not, the title of the ad and the inspiration behind the text comes from a quote from Lincoln, which is reproduced in the body of the ad:   “‘I had a wonderful mother, said Lincoln. ‘All that I am, I owe to her.’” 

Here’s a close up of the text:

The ad begins by talking about how parents can help shape their children’s futures, mentions the ways in which the product could help mothers soothe their babies so they can get the sleep they need, and finishes by bringing in another theme that ran through the Company’s advertising from the very beginning:  the scientific basis, reliability and trustworthiness of the Company’s products. 

A small paragraph on the left side of the ad (as it appeared in magazines) mentioned a new Baby Gift Box that contained the three baby products we made in 1922:  JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, JOHNSON’S® Baby Cream and JOHNSON’S® Baby Soap.  The paragraph on the lower right, under the baby powder tin, was a shout-out to the retail pharmacists who sold our products to the public at that time, in the days before supermarkets became widespread.

Closeup of Your Druggist is More Than a Merchant paragraph of the 1922 Wonderful Mother ad

This was a reference to a national public awareness campaign the Company initiated that talked about the important role of the retail pharmacist as a trusted, ethical expert who could help people with their own and their family’s health.  It was done to give a boost to community retail pharmacists, in the face of the growing impact of the popularity of the automobile – which let people travel farther to shop.  (The campaign was thought up by Scientific Director Fred Kilmer, himself a former retail pharmacist.)

The Wonderful Mother ad was such an all-time favorite that, approximately 70 years later, our consumer operating company brought it back. 

Wonderful Mother ad circa 1990

The mother and little girl in the new Wonderful Mother ad have updated clothing and hairstyles, but the basic image is the same.  They’re in the same pose, and they’re dressed in just about the same colors as their 1922 counterparts.  The orange and white baby powder tin from 1922 is now the more modern white container of the late 1980s/early1990s.  Looking at the two ads together really gives you a sense of the history of JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder (since 1893!) and the multiple generations of parents and children it has touched.

When people think of LISTERINE® Antiseptic, probably the last thing they think about is electric guitars.  But they should, because LISTERINE®  and the electric guitar go back more than half a century together.  What was the connection?  It was through Les Paul (1915-2009), one of the inventors of the solid body electric guitar, who passed away this summer at age 94.  The LISTERINE®  Brand sponsored his groundbreaking television show in the 1950s.

This on-screen sponsorship ID appeared at the beginning of every episode of Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home

Starting in 1952, the LISTERINE®  Brand sponsored Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home, a five-minute long network television show broadcast from Les Paul’s home in Mahwah, New Jersey.  (That’s not a typo — the episodes were only five minutes long!)  Each episode featured Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford, and some absolutely amazing, incredible guitar playing.  The show ran for 170 episodes. 

Guitar Legend Les Paul and Mary Ford, 1952

The story goes that Les Paul relocated from Hollywood, California to New Jersey specifically to do the show because Mahwah was close to the headquarters of the Lambert Company, which made LISTERINE®  Antiseptic in the early 1950s.  (The merger that would make them into Warner-Lambert happened in 1955.)  Apparently, the Lambert Company president had heard Les Paul and Mary Ford’s hit song “How High the Moon?” and loved it so much that he came up with the idea for a LISTERINE®  – sponsored TV show broadcast from the couple’s home five days a week.  Les Paul accepted, and moved to New Jersey.  You can read the whole story on the Jazz Times website. 

Here’s one of the episodes of Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home.  Be sure to check out the vintage glass LISTERINE®  Antiseptic bottle at the beginning:

And here’s an episode in which Les Paul tries to fix their refrigerator…by serenading it!  This episode also features a vintage LISTERINE® commercial in the middle of the show.

The LISTERINE® Brand became a part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies in 2006, so we can’t take credit for the idea of sponsoring Les Paul’s television show, but it’s a fascinating piece of history that’s now part of the collective history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies. 

From the video clip above, Les Paul plays for his refrigerator

By the way, not only was Les Paul a pioneer in inventing the solid body electric guitar, he also invented multitrack recording, tape delay and many other things that we take for granted as part of modern music.  Most people know Les Paul for the Gibson Les Paul guitar, one of the most recognizable and iconic electric guitars in the world.

The guitar that needs no introduction:  The Gibson Les Paul

So the next time you pick up that bottle of LISTERINE® in your bathroom, you’ll know that you’re not just holding an antiseptic mouthwash first formulated in 1879…you’re ALSO holding the product that sponsored Les Paul — the legend who helped make not only rock music but modern recording techniques possible. 

From Les Paul and Mary Ford’s TV show:  perhaps the most interesting LISTERINE® spokesperson…er, spokes-frog, ever.

And because this is just WAY too good to pass up, here’s one last episode of Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home, with a talking cartoon frog advertising LISTERINE® Antiseptic!

Since August is vacation time, this post was inspired by a Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies employee who sent me these photos from her vacation:

Look What’s In the Smithsonian!

The photos are from her trip to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, which houses, among other things, The Spirit of St. Louis, the famous airplane that aviator Charles Lindbergh used to make the first successful nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.  The flight was a big deal, because though a number of very experienced pilots had tried it, until Lindbergh (who was a talented aviator but had less experience than some of those who had failed) no one had been successful. The Spirit of St. Louis was a small lightweight single seat monoplane, so it didn’t have much room for a lot of extras on it – just food, water and absolutely essential supplies.  According to this site, in order to minimize the plane’s weight and increase fuel efficiency so that it would make it from New York to Paris, these are some of the surprising items that Lindbergh had to eliminate:  the radio, parachute, gas gauges, navigation lights and all unnecessary maps (who knew that maps could be heavy?).  But he took a lightweight Johnson & Johnson First Aid Kit with him.

Alert blog readers will notice from the photo above that Lindbergh’s Johnson & Johnson First Aid Kit is prominently displayed as part of the exhibit.  I understand that The Spirit of St. Louis display is one of the most popular in the museum.  So if anyone is headed to the National Air and Space Museum, be sure to look for the Company’s First Aid Kit that made that historic flight!  (And by the way, look at the flying gloves…they look like three-fingered mittens.)

Thanks to S. G. for the photos!

It’s strong, it’s sticky, it’s in practically every home, and it’s been used to fix almost everything — from airplane wings to houses to chair legs. It has a fanatical following, people even make clothing out of it, and there’s an annual festival and more than one website dedicated to it. What is it? It’s duct tape, and it was invented by Johnson & Johnson during World War II as a waterproof sealing tape.

Samples of  Duct Tape from Permacel Tape Reference Book in Our Archives

So why on earth did a company that made sterile dressings, sterile sutures, public health and personal care products invent a product that people use to repair lawn furniture, car mirrors and countless other things? It was a combination of the Company’s long history of making adhesive tapes for wound dressings…and the role played by U.S. companies during World War II.

ZONAS® Adhesive Plaster — an early cloth tape for wound dressings

Adhesive tape (or adhesive plaster, as it was called a very long time ago) is one of the Company’s oldest products, dating back to the late 1800s, and was an outgrowth of our sterile dressings business – doctors and surgeons needed something to keep the sterile dressings in place on the patient. And of course, adhesive tape was one of the two products (the other being gauze) that was used to invent BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages in 1920.

Johnson & Johnson had been making bandages, dressings and other products for the military since the Spanish American War in 1898 and, during World War I, the Company ran its surgical dressing production around the clock seven days a week to meet the needs of soldiers and hospitals. We continued making lifesaving medical products for the military during World War II, but as a routine part of the war effort, the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies was asked to make or develop a variety of products that weren’t part of its usual product lines.

LUMITE Plastic Screen Cloth – one of our wartime products developed to screen insects during World War II

With the absence of permanent suppliers of military products as an ongoing industry in the 1940s, and the need for quickly gearing up production, it was standard practice during World War II for U.S. companies to be asked to mobilize to make a variety of products for the war effort: among the wartime products Johnson & Johnson affiliate companies made were gas masks (we still have one in our archives!), parts for airplane landing gear, wing hinges and unwoven cotton camouflage material (from our then-affiliate The Chicopee Manufacturing Company). Given the Company’s long expertise in making adhesive tapes, the military asked Johnson & Johnson to have one of its operating companies make a waterproof, strong cloth based tape that could keep moisture out of ammunition cases.  Here’s what our 1945 Annual Report said:

“In Milltown, New Jersey, the Industrial Tape Corporation plant was one of the largest suppliers of industrial tape for the armed forces. These pressure-sensitive tapes, easy to handle and versatile in use, saved valuable time in manufacturing and packaging war materials. A wide variety of tapes to serve a multitude of particular purposes were made for the aviation industry alone. Actually hundreds of thousands of miles of special waterproof tapes were used on tanks, planes, and ammunition destined for overseas.” [Johnson & Johnson 1945 Annual Report]

Duct Taping an Airplane!  (From our 1945 Annual Report)

The tape was originally called duck tape, for its water-repelling properties. (Duck…water…get it?) And, as the story goes, the fabric used to make the tape was called cotton duck. Soldiers soon discovered that the tape was incredibly useful in repairing just about anything that needed repair, from jeeps to planes to tents to boots. As time went on, “duck” morphed into “duct” because of its use in the postwar building industry to help connect…you guessed it…ductwork for heating and air conditioning. 

How duck tape became duct tape:  two men duct taping — what else? — a duct, from a Permacel product catalog in our archives

Navy E Flag Ceremony

Johnson & Johnson received a Navy “E” Award for its work during World War II, which was an honor given to companies that made a significant contribution to the war effort… a contribution that included duct tape.  The Navy E Flag was proudly displayed at the Company’s facilities in New Brunswick, New Jersey. 

Permacel in 1970

Duct tape was originally made by an affiliate company called the Industrial Tape Corporation, which became Permacel. Its headquarters was one of the familiar “Factories Can be Beautiful” buildings in Central New Jersey. Permacel still exists, but it’s no longer part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies: we sold it in 1982.

So the next time you’re fixing that lawn chair or duct-taping the handle of your favorite household tool back together — or perhaps making a duct tape float for the annual duct tape festival parade – you can tell your friends and family that you’re using something  originally invented by Johnson & Johnson for the war effort in 1942.  And stay tuned for my next post about what people used to fix everything BEFORE duct tape…strangely enough, it also came from Johnson & Johnson.
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Have you ever wondered why JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder containers have been square or rectangular in shape since the product was first sold in 1893? Was it because the Company got a good deal on square tins from the local square tin manufacturer? No, that wasn’t it. Was it because the distinctive shape helped consumers identify the product? Perhaps…but that wasn’t the reason, either.

Like everything else about the product (including the scent), the reasons behind the square JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder tins were well thought-out both from the product side (holding the powder) and the consumer side (to be helpful to those using it).

JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder Tin, 1890s

As anyone who’s ever taken care of a baby knows, you need two hands (or sometimes more!) to bathe a baby or change a diaper. You can”t walk away to get something, you have to be focused on the baby and you need to keep everything you need close by.So, the Company chose square and later rectangular tins (and, after 1963, plastic containers) of JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder because they didn’t roll away when being used, so that parents could more easily use the product when taking care of their babies.

Vintage JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder Ad from 1921 Showing Rectangular Tin

Also, the Company had discovered that square or rectangular tins held more product.How do we know that? Because a druggist who visited Johnson & Johnson in 1917 and toured the Company”s labs and manufacturing facilities learned that and wrote about it:

“Incidentally I learned that Johnson & Johnson did not just happen to pack their Baby Powder in square tins. They adopted this form of container because it is most convenient, because it holds more than other forms of containers and because it will stay where placed and not roll around. They aimed to place a powder of quality in a can of utility, and they succeeded admirably.” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, May, 1917, p. 184]

And we can still find a trace of that 1893 tradition today. Even though today”s containers have a much more rounded shape, they still retain subtle sides that stop them from rolling.

I recently spoke with a reader of this blog whose father worked as a salesman for Johnson & Johnson in the early 1920s. He told me that his father was one of the first people to demonstrate a new invention to doctors…the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage.

First BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage Package, 1921

Today we take BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages for granted, but before the invention of the product in 1920 by Earle Dickson, a young Company employee, there were no ready made adhesive bandages. People needing a small bandage had to make one themselves, and they were often too cumbersome to be easily applied by one person. Most people just used what they had in the house, which many times meant tying a piece of rag around the cut. Earle took two Johnson & Johnson products – adhesive tape and gauze – and combined them to make the first adhesive bandage to help his wife Josephine, who was constantly cutting or burning her fingers in the kitchen. Earle showed the folks at work what he invented. They loved it, and a new product was born.

Earle Dickson, Inventor of the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage, in later years. Earle became a member of the Board of Directors and a Vice President.

The first BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages were just as Earle had invented them – a long strip of adhesive tape 18 inches long and 2 ½ inches wide, with an inch-wide strip of gauze down the middle, covered in crinoline fabric to protect it and keep it clean. BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages were not made by machine and pre-cut until 1924. You would just cut off the width you needed, depending on the size of the cut or scrape you wanted to cover, peel off the fabric backing, and stick it on.

Step #1

Step #2

Step #3

Naturally, this needed demonstrating, which is where the salesmen (or travelers, as they were called in those days) came in. They showed the newfangled adhesive bandages to doctors, butchers (who apparently cut themselves a lot) and retail pharmacists. A Johnson & Johnson traveler would come in with his BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages and a pair of scissors, and demonstrate how the product should be used.

A Company Salesman, or Traveler, circa 1921

What did they say? It probably sounded a lot like a 1921 article in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER about the new product:

“Suppose you have a cut on your finger. Cut a piece of Band-Aid from the strip, pull off the face-cloth and put the bandage over the wound. That’s all there is to it. The bandage will stay right where you place it without tying. Can you imagine anything handier for the household or shop?” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vo. XIII, No. 6, 1921, p. 378]

The article, written to educate the retail druggists who sold the Company’s products, went on to state that the useful new product could be “applied instantly to the numerous cuts received by children at play and to the ordinary injuries incident to household or any mechanical work,” as well as holding other dressings in place, applying lotions, protecting blisters and more. Although the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage had a slow start, it caught on and became one of the Company’s best-known products, due in part to the persistence of salesmen like the reader’s father.

By the way, this site has some great pictures of classic BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage tins through the years, including some very old ones.

Many people remember Little Golden Books from their childhoods. They’re small, filled with lots of colorful illustrations, and have short, heartwarming stories for young children.  Everybody probably had a favorite Little Golden Book when they were little: The Three Little Kittens, The Fuzzy Duckling, Scuffy the Tugboat, Little Red Riding Hood, The Saggy Baggy Elephant…and the one about BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages.  Wait a second…the one about WHAT?

Cover of Doctor Dan the Bandage Man, courtesy of Little Golden Books

You read correctly: the one about BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages. In 1950, the publishers of Little Golden Books published Doctor Dan The Bandage Man, about a little boy named Dan who is out playing with his friends and scratches his finger.

In a scene familiar to most households, Dan gets his finger bandaged by his Mom.  Illustration and Text From Doctor Dan the Bandage Man, by Helen Gaspard, courtesy of Little Golden Books

Dan runs crying to see his mom, who promptly washes the scratch and covers it with a BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage. For the rest of the book, every time a friend, a pet, a toy or his Dad gets a cut or scrape, Dan puts a bandage on the injury to make it better. On the last page, his Dad nicknames him “Doctor Dan the Bandage Man.”

Page showing where the six BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages were attached.

But that’s not all.  The book came with six real BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages — attached inside and advertised on the cover — so that kids could bandage their own hurt toys, should the need arise.

So how did the Company manage to get one of its most familiar products placed into a book series read by millions of parents to their children?  According to the Publisher’s Note at the beginning of the book, we didn’t…they came to us.  Here’s what Simon and Schuster (the publisher in 1950)  said:

“For a long, long time, the publishers have been ardent admirers of BAND-AID Adhesive Bandages – not only for themselves (publishers seem to cut themselves more than other people) but because of their effect on children.  We’ve noted that BAND-AID Adhesive Bandages not only cheer and comfort small boys and girls who bang themselves up, but that they make wonderful playthings as well.  No one quite knows how many millions of dolls and stuffed toys…have been patched up in this manner.”

“Consequently, when the idea for this book came to us, we promptly went to Johnson & Johnson and asked them if they would be willing to help us. They were very nice about it and asked that we point out that BAND-AID is Johnson & Johnson’s trademark for its brand of adhesive bandages and for several other products in its line.”

Besides illustrating the fact that we had a trademark law department that never slept even back in 1950, this publishers note shows that, three decades after they were invented, BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages had become such a part of parents’ and children’s lives that the most popular children’s book publisher wrote a story about them.

According to Random House (the publisher of Little Golden Books today), Doctor Dan marked one of the first ventures into book and product joint packaging, something that’s common today. And Doctor Dan’s first printing of 1.75 million copies (each copy containing six BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages – that’s a staggering 10.5 million total adhesive bandages given to readers!) is the largest first printing of any Little Golden Book to date, according to Random House’s timeline (which is dated 2002).

Here’s a good history of Little Golden Books – they were the first inexpensive, high-quality children’s books that were widely available, and allowed many more families to afford and own books for their children.

Doctor Dan bandages his sister’s doll, courtesy of Little Golden Books

Doctor Dan the Bandage Man proved to be so popular that it was reprinted in 2004 and is still in print today (and yes, it still comes with BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages). It’s also featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian as a piece of American culture.

If you’re interested in reading Doctor Dan the Bandage Man, it’s available to read here.