Kilmer House

Game shows.  Moustaches.  Hollywood movie studios.  Doll clothing.  They can’t all be connected to Johnson & Johnson…or can they?  Of course, they can!  Read on to discover seven more things you didn’t know about J&J. 1.    In the mid-1950s, iconic comedian and television pioneer Imogene Coca advertised the Company’s first aid products on television, as part of Johnson & Johnson’s “Emergencies Don’t Wait” campaign.  Here’s a photo of her overreacting in horror to the fact that her medicine cabinet is lacking first aid supplies…something that the Company hoped to remedy with its 19

Throughout its history, Johnson & Johnson has been known for developing and making products in response to needs in society…such as the first commercially available sterile surgical dressings.  Occasionally, though, the Company produced a product that helped fill a more unusual need in society.  One early product filled not a health care need, but a fashion craze.  And that product was…Beauty Spots.     Beauty Spots were small pieces of material – usually black silk or sometimes velvet – with adhesive on the back.  They were most commonly shaped lik

A Peek Inside One of Our Offices in the Mid-1940s 1. The Company started on the fourth floor of an old wallpaper factory. 2. In the Nineteen-teens, before air conditioning, Johnson & Johnson had a swimming pool for employees – at work! -- so they could cool off in the summer heat. 3. When he was younger, Robert Wood Johnson the first was known to wear a stovepipe hat.  (We don’t have a picture of him wearing the hat in our archives, unfortunately.) 4. Barry Manilow wrote the “I Am Stuck on BAND-AID® Brand…” jingle. 5. John Travolta, Terri Garr and Brooke Shie

What’s the weirdest thing ever made by the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies?  Was it a tonic medicine with a sherry base?  Or sausage casings?  Or doll clothing?  (Yes, we once made that too, out of non-woven fabric.  That’s the subject of a future post.) Or maybe beauty spots?  Or duct tape?  Or maybe…it was rubber bands. Some Typical Modern Non-Company Related Rubber Bands So…we made rubber bands?  Yes we actually did -- or to be more accurate, one of our acquisitions did in 1910.   Readers of Kilmer House will remember that the Co

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