Band Aid: Top 4 Things to Know About It

In this week's video, we go through the Band-aid and how it became such a controversial product among black people.
Invented in the 1920s, by the giant pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, the Band-Aid has grown to become a generic term used for adhesive bandages all around the world.
His inventor, Earle Dickson, was a Johnson & Johnson cotton buyer who, after having to help his wife treating her self-inflicted wounds while cooking, came up with a prototype to allow her to dress them without assistance.
Prior to Dickson’s invention, a bandage consisted of a separate gauze and adhesive tape that you had to cut to size and apply it yourself.
Apart from the Band-Aids’ invention, their evolution can easily be summarized in three key moments:
1924 when the original Band-Aids went from hand to machine-made products;
1939 when the market saw the introduction of the first sterilized Band-Aids;
And, 1958, when the regular tape was replaced by vinyl one.
The 1950s, following a dull and uneventful sales period, saw the introduction of decorative Band-Aids featuring numerous childhood icons like the Mickey Mouse, the Superman, and the likes (Donald Duck, Oliver & Company, Spider-Man, Rocket Power, Rugrats, smiley faces, Barbie, Dora the Explorer, Batman and Duck Dynasty). This strategy was however complemented with another interesting marketing move on Johnson & Johnson’s behalf: free Band-Aids' donation to boy scouts troops and overseas military personnel; which made the Band-Aid brand image stronger and sturdier allowing it to reach an incredible 100 billion sales worldwide.
Band-Aids’ simple design is the reason why this product hasn’t almost changed over the last 100 years; It is basically composed of a piece of gauze attached to the center of a piece of vinyl tape which is then covered with crinoline, to keep it sterile.
This ready-to-go design allowed Band-Aids’ users to dress their wounds without assistance propelling Dickson to Johnson & Johnson’s Vice-Presidency role before his retirement, in 1957.
We’ll now let you know the reason behind this product’s controversial existence among black peoples’ communities:
Band-Aid’s inception saw them being manufactured in only one single color: soft pink. They even featured a TV commercial with a Caucasian woman wearing a Band-Aid on her hand with a voice-over saying: "Neat, flesh-colored, almost invisible". However, this ended up proving to be quite ironic for African-Americans who had to wear pink sticking patches on their darker flesh.
This slip didn’t go unnoticed for the black liberation movement; who would end up publishing a militant cartoon book in 1969, depicting the drawing of a young man (in a Black Panther garb) with his eyes rolling upwards toward a protuberant white adhesive bandage stuck to his forehead with a caption that read: "White is a flesh-colored band-aid".
In the hope of counteracting this issue, in 1998, Michael Panayiotis created Ebon-Aid; a brand that sold band-aids who claimed to have been “exclusively designed for people of color”. With market research showing a 25 to 28% market cap for the African American and the Hispanic communities, Ebon-Aid’s intention was to re-design all first-aid products with people of color in mind.
Unfortunately, due to what Panayiotis attributed to a frustrating placement of his product (being sold on separate shelving solely dedicated to satisfying the needs of African-American customers) Ebon-Aid ended up folding a few years later (in 2002).
Johnson & Johnson would end up adding a variety of light, medium, and deep shades of brown and black skin tones to their Band-Aid designs in 2020.
From its Invention to their late diversity call, going through its evolution and design; these were the top 4 facts about the Band-Aid that you were probably not aware of.

[@sunilkalbandi]

great video buddy, keep them coming