Technological Replacement: Sunny Monday Laundry Soap

In the early 1900s, N. K. Fairbank Company produced many popular varieties of soap. It marketed three of them as a minimum set for any household: all purpose Gold Dust washing powder, Fairy Soap toilet and bath soap, and Sunny Monday Laundry Soap. Sunny Monday was intended for use with washboards. It came as a bar that required a special soap shaver to peel flakes into the washtub.

As manual, and later, electric washing machines gradually replaced the tub and washboard as housewives’ primary means of washing clothes, powdered soaps took over a greater share of the laundry soap market. Laundry bar soaps like Sunny Monday disappeared, taking with them their unique package designs. The red and blue paper wrapping for Sunny Monday is no more.

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