IT TOOK FIVE DECADES of failure to turn Tide Pods into an overnight success.
The “unit-dose” detergent pods became one of the biggest-ever hits for consumer products giant Procter & Gamble not long after their 2012 debut. But P&G had launched an earlier attempt in the 1960s, called Redi-Paks, to utter indifference from consumers. Other iterations in the following decades, such as Rapid Tabs in the 1990s, also fizzled; the company just couldn’t quite master the formula for optimal release of the detergent. That is, until it did; now Tide Pods are a top seller in a $3 billion market.
Today, the Tide Pods’ failed forebears have a place of honor in the “Wall of
