Meet Veritably Clean

Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are truly, truly magical. The David Blaine of cleaning products, if you will. Or, am I David in this situation? And the eraser is like...one of those ladies who gets sawed in half. Or an invisible elephant. Or a top hat with bunnies. Whatever. Moving on. It occurs to me, that good old Dave isn't much for the coin from the ear type of magic anyhow...

What did maintenance workers do before Mr. Clean invented his eraser anyway? How did scuff marks come out of the walls? How did permanent marker get off the under sides of desks?

I don't intend to look too far into how exactly the eraser does these things, because anything that is like five times more power than our other already powerful cleaning products has to contain something that could wilt every flower within a 10 yard radius.

Actually, what I was really wondering about was why the creators of Mr. Clean gave him the image they did. Was it aimed at women? Women want a big muscly white man to help them clean? Or, they really want their husband to help them clean, but this will do? Would the image work the same if he were some other ethnicity? Why is he old? Why is he bald? Why does he wink? Why does he roll up his pant legs?

I tried to research this topic, and all I got was that Ernie Allen created him in 1957. And that his name is Veritably.

Which makes him sound a little bit like he should be out picketing for prohibition with Constance and Prudence.

This has been another delightful episode of Philosophy from the Janitor's Closet. Tune in next time for, "How discovering a woman cleaning what's supposed to be the men's bathroom throws a little boy into an identity crisis."