Johnson's Baby Powder was an invention of Dr. Frederick B. Kilmer, company's first director of scientific affairs. In 1892 responded to a letter from a physician about a patient suffering skin irritations after using medicated plasters. Kilmer suggested to use scented Italian talcum powder to mitigate the irritation and sent a can to the doctor.
Baby Powder debuted in 1893 and went to the market in 1894. The earliest Baby Powder was in a yellow and red tin with a label "For Toilet and Nursery”.
According to Robert Shook, sanitary napkins were included in the young mother's kit but never considered a separate product until customers asked the company for it.
In 1893 the talc was packaged in a box that was originally distributed to midwives and given to mothers following childbirth... Also in the midwife's box were twelve sanitary napkins. Prior to this, there was no such product available to purchase... the company started to manufacture them – the first company to make sanitary napkins in the United States.
The first baby to appear on Johnson's Baby powder label was Mary Lea Johnson Richards, granddaughter of Robert Wood Johnson I (co-founder of Johnson & Johnson).
According to Johnson & Johnson's representative Fred Tewell, baby powder-scented cleaning products became almost a standard not only to cosmetics, but to diapers as well.
Discontinuation of Baby Powder
Johnson & Johnson issued a recall of its Baby Powder in October of 2019 after the United States Food and Drug Administration discovered trace amounts of asbestos in a bottle. After over 100 years, the company announced on May 20, 2020 that its talc-based Baby Powder would be discontinued in the United States and Canada, following declining sales and backlash from recent lawsuits over allegations that the product contained asbestos, which can cause cancer. However, cornstarch-based Baby Powder will continue to be sold in both the United States and Canada.
