A Johnson & Johnson pad from the turn of the 1970s.

Stayfree is an American brand of menstrual pads that Johnson & Johnson owned until 2013. Its dates are given in two ways. English Wikipedia’s article on the brand gives 1969 as the year Stayfree was introduced. The same encyclopedia’s article on Kotex dates “the 1970 introduction of Stayfree by Personal Products Co.” to 1970, and pairs it with Kimberly-Clark’s New Freedom pads as the products after which sanitary belts were no longer needed. We give both dates as those articles state them.

The company named in that sentence, Personal Products Co., is also the name that appears on the brand’s early regulatory records in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s public database of premarket notifications — the filings a company makes before selling certain products the agency classes as medical devices, a category that includes menstrual pads — lists a submission for Stayfree Deodorant Mini-Pads from Personal Products Co. with a decision dated 11 November 1976, and one for Stayfree Maxi Pads dated 17 December 1976. A further Stayfree maxi-pad filing followed on 20 May 1977.

In all three of those records the applicant’s city is given as McHenry, Illinois. Later records place the same applicant in New Jersey: a Stayfree pad filing with a decision dated 2 August 1991 and a Stayfree maxi-pad filing dated 5 November 1991 both list Personal Products Co. at Milltown, New Jersey. The database records where the applicant was based for each filing; it does not say where the pads themselves were made, and we do not draw that conclusion from it.

The records also show the name moving between companies in the group. A filing for Stayfree Deodorant Maxi-Pads, with a decision dated 17 January 1984, was made by Johnson & Johnson Professionals, Inc. of Raynham, Massachusetts, rather than by Personal Products Co. The product names in these filings — mini-pads, maxi pads and their scented and unscented versions — trace how the line was described to the regulator over two decades.

A name built for the shelf.

Stayfree’s name is a compound of two plain English words, and it has stayed fixed through every change of owner. The product names that have sat under it are just as plain. English Wikipedia’s product list for the brand runs through an Ultra Thin family and a Maxi family, each in regular, super, long and overnight sizes, some with wings; the FDA filings of the 1970s and 1980s use the same vocabulary of mini-pads and maxi-pads.

That shelf has always been shared with closely related names. In Johnson & Johnson’s American business, Stayfree sat beside Carefree, the panty-liner brand that appears in the same FDA database under Personal Products Co. from the late 1970s, and beside the o.b. tampon. When Energizer agreed to buy the business in 2013, its announcement named the three together as the “Stayfree pad, Carefree liner and o.b. tampon” brands, which is how they have been grouped in every sale since.

Other American pad brands in this group of guides include Procter & Gamble’s Always and Kimberly-Clark’s Kotex; Kimberly-Clark’s New Freedom pads, now a former Kotex line, are the brand English Wikipedia sets beside Stayfree at the start of the 1970s.

Stayfree has changed hands three times since 2013, each time as part of a group of feminine-care brands rather than on its own. The dated record of those changes comes from the companies’ own announcements, the Associated Press and the trade press, and it is set out below: who held the name, in which countries and from which date.

Pad and tampon packaging is designed to be picked up quickly and carried without attention. Cartons and soft packs tend to use calm colours, rounded type and simple graphic shapes, and many are sized to sit in a bathroom cabinet or slip into a bag. The individual wrapper has become part of the design as well: a small printed sleeve or a twisted paper or film pouch that keeps each item closed, often in a colour that matches the outer pack.

Much of the information on these packs is organised by colour. Sizes and flow levels are commonly coded with a distinct tone or a row of drop symbols, so a shopper can tell variants apart on a crowded shelf without reading every line. Shapes, applicator types and liner lengths are shown with small diagrams rather than photographs.

Packs also carry text that design does not control: usage leaflets, material lists and statutory wording that differ from market to market. Each guide in this group sets out who started the brand, who owns it now and how its name, packs and advertising have changed, keeping to what dated sources record.

From Johnson & Johnson to Energizer, Edgewell and Essity.

The North American business left Johnson & Johnson in 2013. On 31 July 2013 Energizer Holdings, then based in St. Louis, announced an agreement to buy the Stayfree, Carefree and o.b. brands in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean from McNeil-PPC, Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, Inc., which it described as members of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies. The sale included the brand assets and a Johnson & Johnson, Inc. manufacturing plant in Montreal, the Associated Press reported the same day, and Energizer said it would combine the brands with its existing Playtex feminine-care business. Energizer announced on 23 October 2013 that the purchase had closed. The 2013 sale was limited to those three markets.

Energizer itself then divided. On 1 July 2015 it completed the spin-off of its household-products division, which took the Energizer name with it, and the remaining company, holding the shaving, skin-care, feminine-care and infant-care brands, changed its name to Edgewell Personal Care, the company announced that day. Stayfree passed into Edgewell with the rest of the feminine-care portfolio, alongside Playtex, Carefree and o.b.

Under Edgewell the American Stayfree range was folded into its sister brand. In a post dated May 2024 on the Carefree website, titled “What Happened to Stayfree?”, the company announced that “Stayfree is now Carefree,” listing which Stayfree maxi and ultra-thin pads were being replaced by Carefree pads and saying it would continue to offer a few select Stayfree products while many sizes were phased out.

Edgewell then sold the business. On 2 February 2026 it announced that it had completed the sale of its feminine-care business to Essity, the Swedish hygiene and health company; Premium Beauty News reported on 4 February 2026 that the assets were the Carefree, Stayfree and o.b. brands in North America and the Playtex brand worldwide, and that the deal had been announced in November 2025. Consumer Goods Technology reported the completed purchase on 3 February 2026, noting that Essity’s other brands include Knix, Tempo and Plenty. Essity has owned Stayfree in North America since February 2026, and the brand’s American website now carries an Essity Hygiene and Health AB copyright line.

For a design guide, Stayfree shows how a plain, durable name can travel through four owners without changing a letter, even as its products are moved under a sister brand. Compare Carefree, which has shared its owners since the 1970s, and Luvs, another American hygiene name that sits inside a larger group’s portfolio. For this guide we use a deep teal, mist and coral with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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