A wartime material that went into the kitchen.

Saran Wrap began as a material before it was a product. Dow Chemical’s history of its own advertising says that polyvinylidene chloride, the substance Dow named Saran, was discovered by accident in 1933 by Ralph M. Wiley, and English Wikipedia places that work in Dow’s laboratories in Midland, Michigan, describing Wiley as a lab worker there. Wikipedia says Dow registered “Saran” as a trademark in 1940 but did not develop a consumer product from it straight away, and that in 1943 Wiley and his manager, John Reilly, completed the remaining work needed to introduce the material.

The war shaped its early uses. Dow’s corporate history says the original film was green and oily, and was developed during the Second World War for the U.S. Army, which had asked for an inexpensive material to wrap equipment being moved from ship to shore. The Science History Institute, whose archive holds Dow’s historical photograph collection, gives the same account in its catalogue: saran plastic was developed to wrap arms and equipment for transport during the war, and was later developed and marketed as Saran Wrap for household use. After the war, Dow says, its researchers turned the material into a clear, transparent film.

The move into homes started inside the company. Dow says two employees asked permission to cut household-size rolls from big industrial rolls, packed them at home, called them “Clingwrap” and sold them to housewives in Midland. Wikipedia names the pair as Carroll “Curly” Irons and Russ Ludwig, dates their side business to 1947, and says that Charles J. Strosacker, on hearing of its popularity, persuaded them to sell the venture to Dow in 1948.

A consumer push, DowBrands and the 1998 sale.

Dow then put its own name behind the roll. English Wikipedia says that in the year after the 1948 purchase, Dow marketed a retail version of the clingy film under the trademark Saran Wrap, sold in rolls and used mainly for wrapping food. Dow’s corporate history says that by 1953 Saran Wrap had been launched nationally. A photograph in the Science History Institute’s collection, dated 1951, shows saran film being made at the Midland plant as large extruded bubbles, which rollers then flattened before the film was wound on rolls.

Dow’s history describes the company as one used to selling its products to other companies, and quotes Leland I. Doan on the need to reach American households directly. To build recognition, Dow says, it sponsored an entire television programme, the NBC drama Medic, which it places in the 1954 autumn season, and its advertising history says Saran Wrap debuted on The Today Show. Dow later added other household products, among them Ziploc bags in 1968 and Dow Bathroom Cleaner, promoted in the 1970s with animated Scrubbing Bubbles.

Those household products were later grouped as DowBrands. A Dow advertisement in the Midland Daily News of 18 May 1997, printed in a section marking the company’s centenary and now held by the Science History Institute, dated the company’s household products to 1953 in its headline and showed Saran Wrap beside Handi-Wrap, Ziploc freezer bags and Scrubbing Bubbles.

Within months the unit was sold. CNNfn reported on 28 October 1997 that Dow, based in Midland, had agreed to sell DowBrands to the closely held S. C. Johnson & Son. The report described a home food products division that included Ziploc bags and the Saran Wrap and Handi-Wrap films, and a home care division with brands including Scrubbing Bubbles, Spray ’n Wash, Fantastik and Glass Plus, and said completion was subject to government approvals. English Wikipedia dates the acquisition to 1998. S. C. Johnson, founded in 1886 and based in Racine, Wisconsin, according to Wikipedia, has owned Saran Wrap since 1998.

Design and documentation.

Laundry and kitchen-wrap brands live on the shelf as packaging first. A detergent jug, a softener bottle and a wrap carton are the parts of these brands that most people handle, and each carries its name, its colours and its pictures on a surface that has to be read quickly from a supermarket aisle and then again at home, beside a washing machine or in a kitchen drawer.

Those surfaces change over time. A label may be redrawn, a bottle reshaped, a carton given a new cutting edge or a new illustration, and the company behind the name may change hands while the name itself stays on the pack. That makes the plain questions worth asking for each brand: who started it, who has owned it since, and how its name, label and advertising have been presented over the years.

Each guide in this group sets out what independent, dated sources record about those questions, marks what rests on a company’s own account by saying so, and treats the colours and typefaces shown here as our interpretation rather than an official specification.

A trademark, a roll and a carton.

Saran Wrap’s identity rests on a trademark older than the household product. Wikipedia dates Dow’s registration of the word “Saran” to 1940, before the retail roll, and the household name joined that word to “Wrap”. Today Dow’s history pages carry a note that Saran Wrap and its logo are trademarks of S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc., the company that bought the brand in 1998.

The packaging has changed many times. The Science History Institute holds two Dow advertising stills, with the photographs dated 1965, that show examples of Saran Wrap packaging, each package marked with its date of production, running from 1952 to 1964. Dow’s advertising history adds a print advertisement from 1953, which it says appeared in the nationally syndicated This Week magazine as one element of a larger advertising campaign for the product, alongside the television sponsorship of Medic.

The roll has also stayed in the same company as its stablemates. The 1997 centenary advertisement showed Saran Wrap as one of Dow’s household brands only months before Dow agreed to sell them, and under S. C. Johnson it has sat in the same portfolio as Ziploc and Scrubbing Bubbles, two other names that came across in the same deal.

For a design guide, Saran Wrap shows how a trademark registered for a material can become a household name once a carton and a roll put it in the kitchen drawer, and how that name can pass from a chemical company to a closely held consumer-goods company. Compare it with Ziploc, which made the same move from Dow to S. C. Johnson, and Reynolds Wrap, another kitchen-wrap brand. For this guide we use cling blue, carton red and film grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Saran Wrap’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.