I've got a cold and every handkerchief in the house is used

Don't tell my wife. I've been blowing my nose on her makeup tissues all week. — Husband, 1924

The tissue started out in World War I as padding for bandages, and it got tried in gas-mask filters. After the war the company boxed it up for wiping off cold cream. Then the letters came in. Husbands were blowing their noses on it. In 1930 the company ran two ads in Peoria, one for makeup and one for noses, and 60% of the readers who answered said noses. So the company did what its customers told it to. That doesn't happen as often as it should.

Holdouts: some people still carry a cloth handkerchief and put it back in their pocket.

The full file

The name is just "clean" spelled with a K, plus the "ex" off Kotex, the company's other product. That one came first. In World War I, Army and Red Cross nurses had worked out that the same wartime padding made a good sanitary pad, and the company took the hint.

In 1929 came the Pop-Up box, with the tissues folded into each other so they come out one at a time. Somebody earned his pay that day.

Then in August 2023 Kimberly-Clark quit selling Kleenex to shoppers in Canada. It blamed supply. A whole country with colds, and no Kleenex on the shelf.