Softsoap (marketed as Softsoap Brand) is the trade name of

Colgate-Palmolive Colgate-Palmolive Company is an American multinational consumer products company headquartered on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company specializes in the production, distribution, and provision of household, health car ...

's liquid

hand soap Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are used as ...

and

body wash Shower gel (also shower cream or body wash) is a specialized liquid product used for cleaning the body during showers. Not to be confused with liquid soaps, shower gels, in fact, do not contain saponified oil. Instead, it uses synthetic deter ...

. The company is famous for its soap dispensers' former aquarium theme, where the dispenser would be styled to make the it look like a aquarium with tropical fish printed inside of the plastic. William Sheppard of New York was granted patent number 49,561 for his "Improved Liquid Soap" on August 22, 1865, for his discovery that a small amount of conventional soap could be mixed with large amounts of

spirits Spirit or spirits may refer to: Liquor and other volatile liquids * Spirits, a.k.a. liquor, distilled alcoholic drinks * Spirit or tincture, an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol * Volatile (especially flammable) liquids, ...

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...

(or

hartshorn Hartshorn is the antler of male red deer. Derivatives Various nitrogen compounds were made from hartshorn shavings: * Oil of hartshorn is a crude chemical product obtained from the destructive distillation of deer antlers. * Salt of hartshorn r ...

, as it was known at the time) to create a soap with a consistency similar to that of

molasses Molasses () is a viscous substance resulting from refining sugarcane or sugar beets into sugar. Molasses varies in the amount of sugar, method of extraction and age of the plant. Sugarcane molasses is primarily used to sweeten and flavour foods ...

. His invention became common in public areas, but was not generally available for use in homes. In 1980, entrepreneur Robert R. Taylor began selling pump soap under the brand name of Softsoap, through his company, The Minnetonka Corporation, located in

Chaska, Minnesota Chaska is a city and the county seat of Carver County, Minnesota, United States. An outer ring suburb of the Twin Cities, Chaska is home to the Hazeltine National Golf Club and is known for its historic downtown area located on a bend of the M ...

. Within six months, he had sold $25 million worth of Softsoap before selling the brand to

in 1987.He had been able to give his product a leg up by buying all the bottles he could for the first run so no one else could release a similar product at the same time. John Rogers for Associated Press
"Robert R. Taylor, Creator of SoftSoap, Dead at 77"
, ''bigstory.ap.org'', September 12, 2013. Retrieved December 30, 2013.

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*
About.com blurb

{{Colgate-Palmolive Colgate-Palmolive brands Products introduced in 1980 Soap brands

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