Final Product Critique- Tide Pods

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The History, Philosophy and Ethics of Design.

8 min readJun 8, 2020

The product that I will be discussing throughout this essay is Procter & Gamble’s very successful product Tide Pods. Tide Pods' popularity over the last few years has risen massively because they have become almost essential to college students. I thought this would be an interesting product to research and discuss because I really wanted to look into what makes these small magical pods so successful as a product. As I started to look into it more, I learned that Tide Pods actually have a longer and more complex history than I thought. To begin Tide is the largest detergent company that captures bout 14% of worldwide detergent sales (1). Before we start this essay, I have shown a timeline of the evolution of Tide Pods below.

1965: Procter & Gamble originally created laundry pods when they launched Salvo tablets. These were water dissolvable tablets.

This was advertised for men. “Only 3.5 cents a tablet and no-spill or waste. See not even a wife could get things clearer. get new Salvo a fortified detergent” (4).

1970: Salvo is removed from the market as the sales did not reflect projections.

1980: Proctor and Gamble’s Cheer Power pouches a single-dose laundry paste packaged in a water-soluble film, but it went nowhere and were complete fails.

1990’s: European detergent makers (Henkel AB) launch laundry tablets (Persil)

2006: Cot N’ Wash introduces Dropps in the U.S. market with some success.

2012: Procter & Gamble relaunched a liquid tablet product under the name Tide Pods. (3)

This timeline is key to the history of the tide pod. It really shows the persistence and grit of P&G. It is shocking to see that it took over 45 years for P&G to make their innovation successful. They didn’t change much from the original laundry pod in design, but they did change key features such as the name. Along with this, they launched Tide Pods in a very different society and culture than back in 1965. I believe that the rise in Tide Pods and the success of this product has to do with the United States rise in college attendance. Everyone that I know uses Tide Pods because they are easy and quick to use. Along with this, it makes cleaning close less confusing. You don’t need to measure, you don’t need to use stain fighter, you just throw a pod in. When P&G first release Salvo, about 9.4% of people went to college. This is a very small market for an entirely new product to break into. This meant that people at home would have to buy Salvo over the cheaper bulk detergent (2). On the other hand, in 2012, more than 30% of people went to college. This is a completely different market for Tide Pods, as it increases their ability to succeed immensely. Within only 40 years, their market size grew over 300%, which is what I think led to its ability to succeed in the marketplace and in turn become a long-lasting product.

When originally marketed in 1965, this was a product for lazy men, who did their own laundry. The commercial states, “It’s only me. I waited until there was no lady’s around.” This is an important thing to point out during this product launched because it was directly advertised towards men who lived alone and didn’t really know how to do laundry. Watching the advertisement, you will notice that the commercial is almost like a how-to video. It is teaching men how to wash clothes and making them really simply because of the new tablets. It continues on and states, “[Salvo] only 3.5 cents a tablet and no-spill or waste. See not even a wife could get things looking cleaner.” This is very interesting because it states that not only does it clean the clothes, but that it does it better than a wife could. This is actually a genius marketing strategy because it is reinforcing to the target audience that they are okay being alone and that they don’t need a wife because with Salvo they now have laundry solved.

Even though Tide claims their product to be eco-friendly, I wanted to research more about this as I think it is crucial to determine whether or not this product is a time-saving luxury item or a better more environmentally friendly product. From my research, I learned that not only are Tide Pods bad for aquatic life, but they also take more energy to manufacture than other clothe washing alternatives (5/6). The pods are made from a water-soluble polymer (polyvinyl alcohol) which is safe, but when dissolved in water it can do harm to marine life. If this were to run off to a water source, it could cause damage to the aquatic life. Along with this, it was stated in the ‘Green Stars Project’ that these pods can also cause cancer if this runoff water gets into the human body. I think that all these situations are very important to look into when purchasing Tide Pods. I do not think that the entire responsibility lies on P&G because I think sometimes people use Tide Pods too much. For example, I do not like using them because they are overpriced, so I simply use powder detergent. I think for some people these Tide Pods are great because they help you learn how to do laundry, but after a while, I think that they simply become a luxury to students as they are in reality not better for the environment.

On top of this, it takes more effort and energy to manufacture each individual Tide Pod compared to a container of liquid soap. Comparing the two-manufacturing processes, it is very obvious that it takes for energy and time to manufacture each Tide Pod (8). This is simply because each pod has to be filled separately, while a large container of soap only has to be filled once. P&G looks towards a company named MonoSol to engineer and manufacture this single-use laundry detergent. MonoSol is an expert in the field as they make many other single-use water-soluble items including shaving cream, food, and dish soap. Researching what this team especially did, I could not identify one inventor as the teams continually stated that everyone’s goal was a lined and no one took credit for the work alone.

It would be impossible to write about Tide Pods and not mention the internet craze of 2017. In December of 2017, Tide Pods became the focus of an internet meme, which involves a dare to consume the item. This meme was especially popular with teenagers. As a response to these dares, Google and Facebook started removing videos that featured the challenge. Along with this Procter & Gamble created multiple advertisements telling people to avoid eating the products. This was a perfect example of the misuse surrounding Tide Pods. This all started from a single social media post and dare. But the real question is, did it help the sales of Tide Pods. In an article written by Market Watch, it states “More consumers, 41%, would consider buying Tide the next time they were shopping for household items, according to YouGov BrandIndex, a market research site that interviews 4,800 people every weekday. That’s up four percentage points since Dec. 30. Word of mouth is at its highest level in three years, with 13% of people talking about the detergent on social media in the past two weeks” (9). It is hard to tell if this increase in sales is due to a direct effect on the internet meme, but it is something that is interesting to look into. Looking at P&G from a critical eye, should they have stopped the sale and production of these products until they spread awareness about the dangers. In my opinion, I think that would have been the most ethical thing to do. Again, this is a luxury item, so even though it was not P&G’s fault for these poisonings, I think it would have been best to halt the sale of the product, while they launched campaigns about the risks and dangers of the poison. Because these products could lead to the suicide of a teenager, it would have been ethical for them to stop the sale while this issue was happening, but this is not what they did. By simply playing commercials on TV telling people to not eat the pods, this was a ploy to protect their brand, not their customers. They kept selling the item during this time, and behind the scenes, they innovated in order to make the shell harder to bite through.

Finally, looking towards the future, I think pods are going to continue to be successful in the detergent industry, but also other industries. The benefits for these single-use pods are extremely beneficial to make other sectors eco-friendlier then they are right now. The company has already started making shampoo, body wash, and hand soap, as this would be great solutions to the plastic waste that is happening with hotel soaps (10). If these pods were given to guests instead of the small plastic samples, then it would be better for the environment because the plastic production and usage would go down drastically. I have also researched that there are companies making single-use toothpaste dissolvable tablets (11). This is another area where the packaging of the toothpaste is wasteful because not only is it made out of plastic, but there is always toothpaste that gets stuck in the tube. In conclusion, the history of Tide Pods goes further back then I thought, they have had highs and lows throughout the products launching both financially and ethically, but I do think that the future is bright for single-use pods not only for the detergent industry but also for other areas that need innovation.