Harpic

Harpic is the brand name of a toilet-bowl cleaner launched in the United Kingdom in the 1920s by Reckitt Benckiser. It is currently available in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. The toilet cleaning products marketed under the brand name include liquids, tablets, wipes, brush systems, toilet bowl and cistern blocks.

It contains hydrochloric acid (10%) as the active ingredient,[1] along with butyl oleylamine and others in an aqueous solution.

History

The original toilet cleaner was invented by Harry Pickup (hence the origin of the name Harpic[2]), who was based in Roscoe Street, Scarborough, in North Yorkshire. He also invented Oxypic, which was a sealant used in cast iron heating systems, and patented the Lock & Lift circular manhole covers, which were used initially by the British Military. The company also produced the steel components used on the Mulberry harbours, for the D-day landings.

Advertising

UK advertisements from the 1930s onwards used the slogan Cleans Round The Bend (for this reason the name is occasionally used as slang for crazy – George Macdonald Fraser uses this sense in his autobiographical "Quartered Safe Out Here" when talking about an idiosyncratic British officer commanding an irregular unit ). The Harpic Send for the Experts (2008) advert featured Tom Reynolds.

Products

This is the Harpic product range as of 2010:

  • Harpic Bathroom Cleaner
  • Harpic Power Plus
  • Harpic Max Rim Block
  • Harpic Hygienic
  • Harpic All in 1
  • Harpic Active Fresh Toilet Cleaner
  • Harpic 100% Limescale Remover Toilet Cleaner
  • Harpic Flushmatic
gollark: Oh, that, they're obviously going to log that.
gollark: What information can they actually measure regarding that? Mouse movements or something?
gollark: It *might* allow somewhat faster typing (this is pretty disputed, and the claim that QWERTY is designed to slow you down is inaccurate; as far as I know it was actually designed to spread out frequently pressed keys on the keyboard to prevent jamming), but all my stuff is configured for QWERTY, everyone *else's* stuff (which I may have to use) also is, and it would take a lot of effort to learn it.
gollark: People talk about DVORAK a nonzero amount, but I use QWERTY on everything because I don't see a significant benefit to switching.
gollark: Œkay.

References
  1. "Chemistry in your cupboard: Harpic". www.rsc.org. Royal Society of Chemistry.
  2. "Scarborough connection with famous cleaning products". The Scarborough News.

Ingredients: Hydrochloric acid, Hydroxyethyl oleylamine, Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, Ammonium chloride, Methyl salicylate, Butylated hydroxytoluene, Acid Blue 25, Acid red 88, Deionized Water

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.