A little booklet of the adventures of
the Microbe Family, written in what Dupont called “merry verses,” promoted greater acceptance of Cellophane

Just one of those mer­ry vers­es was pub­lished in this 1935 full-page, full-colour adver­tise­ment on the cost­ly inside back cov­er of The Cana­di­an magazine.

Three lit­tle drops of mois­ture lived
With­in some cig­a­rettes,
Kept their tobac­co-cot­tage fresh –
The pre­cious lit­tle pets

 One night they hung their panties up
And snug­gled into bed,
When at the win­dow there appeared
A most hor­rif­ic head

 It was the thirsty Dry­ness Bug
A‑glowering at the pane,
“You can’t come in”, the kid­dies cried,
“We’re safe in Cellophane!”

Cel­lo­phane rev­o­lu­tion­ized pack­ag­ing. It  was used to wrap and pro­tect the fresh­ness of count­less prod­ucts. It was the most pop­u­lar mate­r­i­al for man­u­fac­tur­ing cig­ar and cig­a­rette pack­ag­ing; its per­me­abil­i­ty to mois­ture made cel­lo­phane the per­fect prod­uct for this appli­ca­tion as cig­ars and cig­a­rettes must be allowed to “breathe” while in storage.

A cou­ple of ques­tions: were these mer­ry vers­es direct­ed to adults or to kids and why would Dupont adver­tise an indus­tri­al prod­uct in a con­sumer magazine.

Dupont adver­tised this indus­tri­al prod­uct in con­sumer mag­a­zines to pro­mote con­sumer accep­tance of their indus­tri­al prod­uct there­by increas­ing the attrac­tive­ness of Cel­lo­phane to the man­u­fac­tur­ers of con­sumer products.

The Cel­lo­phane brand was so famous that it became the gener­ic term for see-through plas­tic wrapping.

Advertisement for Cellophane, an industrial good, that appeared in a consumer magazine The Canadian

The Cana­di­an was Canada’s old­est mag­a­zine. It was found­ed in 1823, when Cana­da was still the Domin­ion of Cana­da. Through­out most of the 116 years of the Canadian’s exis­tence it played no small part in the upbuild­ing of a nation­al Cana­di­an spirit.

In 1926, the Cana­di­an was acquired by Hugh C. MacLean Pub­li­ca­tions Lim­it­ed, and its cir­cu­la­tion rose from 9,600 paid sub­scrip­tions to more than 137,000 in 1938. In Novem­ber, 1937, the prop­er­ty was tak­en over by a new­ly orga­nized com­pa­ny which put addi­tion­al cap­i­tal into it. But pub­li­ca­tion ceased in 1939. The pub­lish­ers blamed the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da for refus­ing to put Cana­di­an mag­a­zines on an equal basis with their Unit­ed States competitors.

A state­ment pub­lished in the farewell issue of the Cana­di­an read:  “Since 1926 Cana­di­an Mag­a­zine has paid out to the Domin­ion Gov­ern­ment $135,000 in postage alone. Mil­lions of copies of for­eign peri­od­i­cals are car­ried in Cana­di­an mails with­out pay­ing Cana­di­an postage. Although for­eign peri­od­i­cals enter Cana­da absolute­ly free of duties or tax­es, the cost of mate­ri­als and adver­tis­ing in Cana­di­an mag­a­zines is increased by duties and tax­es not imposed upon their for­eign com­peti­tors. Almost every­thing that the Cana­di­an pub­lish­ers require is taxed. For­eign com­peti­tors con­tribute noth­ing in duties or taxes.”