Oxydol is a brand of

laundry detergent Laundry detergent is a type of detergent (cleaning agent) used for cleaning dirty laundry (clothes). Laundry detergent is manufactured in powder (washing powder) and liquid form. While powdered and liquid detergents hold roughly equal share o ...

sold in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It was created in 1914 by Thomas Hedley Co. of Newcastle upon Tyne and purchased by

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...

in 1927. It was P&G's first laundry soap. In the 1930s, Oxydol was the sponsor of the ''

Ma Perkins ''Ma Perkins'' (sometimes called ''Oxydol's Own Ma Perkins'') is an American radio soap opera that was heard on NBC from 1933 to 1949 and on CBS from 1942 to 1960. It was also broadcast in Canada, and Radio Luxembourg carried it in Europe. The ...

'' radio show, considered the first

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

; as such, Oxydol sponsorship put the "soap" in "soap opera". In the mid-1950s, the soap was suffering declining sales, due in large part to P&G's introduction of its popular detergent,

Tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravity, gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide t ...

. As a result, the soap formula was discontinued, and Oxydol was transformed into a detergent product, with color safe bleach. P&G sold the brand in 2000 to

Redox Brands Redox Brands was a marketing company formed in 2000 by Todd Wichmann and Richard Owen, former executives with the multinational consumer products firm Procter & Gamble (P&G). The company's first product was Oxydol brand purchased from P&G. P&G wo ...

, a marketing company founded by former Procter & Gamble employees. Redox Brands was merged into

CR Brands CR Brands is a consumer goods company formed in 2006 by Allied Capital through a merger of two of its subsidiaries. History Allied Capital acquired ChemPro, Inc., in March 2006. Allied then merged Redox and ChemPro, Inc., with the resulting comp ...

in 2006. In 2019, the brand was sold to Fab+Kind, which also owns the former US Phoenix Brands detergents. In 2021, FMCG Global Brands Limited, acquired the Oxydol brand for the United Kingdom.

References

Laundry detergents Former Procter & Gamble brands {{Product-stub Products introduced in 1914