His smiling face is seen in kitchens around the world. He is the television program Shark Tank’s greatest success. He is the number one polymer foam personality in the world today.
Homemakers around the world keep him close at hand. He is … Scrub Daddy.
Scrub Daddy sits back in a leather recliner in his gracious yet comfortable home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A Montecristo No. 2 sits in his famous, trademarked smile, which is also good for cleaning knives, forks, and serving pieces of any size. When asked about his success, a contemplative side emerges.
“You have to believe in yourself,” Scrub Daddy says. His perfectly circular eyes, good for inserting fingers when cleaning glasses and jars, seem to widen as he summons up a philosophy that has carried him to the top of the kitchen sink ziggurat. “Sure, I enjoy success, but I never forget what it took to get me to where I am today -- hard work, creativity, versatility. You’ve got to do it all. Look at me. In hot water, I soften, ready to handle the jobs requiring a delicate touch – crystal, chinaware, champagne flutes. But put me in cold water and I’m stiff, unyielding, capable of attacking baked-on grime in chafing dishes, cast iron skillets, coffee pots you left on the burner without turning them off when you went to work that morning. There was a time when you could fill the space under the sink with all the stuff you’d need to handle those different jobs. Now,” he says, his broad smile beaming fixedly, “all you need to do is call Daddy.”
He is the most successful product ever launched on the Fantasy Island of entrepreneurship, Shark Tank. “Oh, that was a special day!” he recollects. “I came out there, I did the cold and hot trick, then I cut through the bottom of a pan that had sat on a dung fire in the Indian Subcontinent like Germany cut through the Low Countries. And when I rinsed off I was good as new. You know, I can do that – rinse me out for the count of three and I’m as cute and yellow as when I escaped from my packaging.” He leans forward in his chair. “Go ahead -- look at me! Is there a line on my face? A divot in my matrix? Not a one! Renee Zellweger wishes she could run her face under cold water for three seconds and look the way she did when she came out of her package!”
And what advice does he give to other kitchen cleaning products who are starting down the path he blazed? “I’ll tell you what the problem is – too many kitchen supplies don’t want success hard enough, if you want to know the truth. They don’t know who they are, what they’re trying to be.” Some would take umbrage at so disparaging a remark, but Scrub Daddy is uncompromising. “It’s true. Look at Chore Boy. What is he? Is he a copper mesh that probably gives you cancer or is he an abrasive shmata, like a rag with impetigo? Let him come back when he’s figured it out. Or look at sponges. What do they do? Absorb water? So did your Aunt Tilly before they put her on diuretics. Ever take a sponge to a day-old casserole of baked ziti you were too drunk to clean after dinner?” Scrub Daddy scoffs, a puff of smoke escaping as he savors his cigar. “Michael Spinks had an easier time with Mike Tyson.
“And then they stick some abrasive felt on the back of a sponge, and suddenly it’s not a sponge, it’s Scotch Brite.” Scrub Daddy harrumphs contemptuously. “That’s not his real name, of course,” Scrub Daddy confides. “His real name is Ian or Angus or something, Scotch Brite is just his nom de nettoyage, I guess you’d say. I might as well glue a sheet of sandpaper to my back and call myself Zitmaster!” Scrub Daddy says, sneering derisively.
It's some serious shade to throw, but others say it’s not just marketing hype – the animosity is real. “I was at the afterparty at the Kitchen and Home Goods Award Dinner as few years ago and saw it first hand,” says Mr. Clean. The earringed icon recalls the moment as he sits on his deck overlooking the Pacific, his shaved head covered in a turban and a floral robe hanging loosely over his trademark white T-shirt and pants. “Everybody’s had a few, and Scotch Brite starts in on Daddy about how he can’t hold his liquor, or any fluids for that matter. So Daddy gets up in his face and calls him a sponge half breed, which raised some eyebrows right there, but Scotch Brite says, ‘At least I’m absorbent,’ kind of snide, so Daddy throws his drink in Scotch Brite’s face and says, ‘Absorb this, bitch.’ We had to break them up, but let me tell you -- when we picked them off the floor, the spot where they were tussling was polished to a fare-thee-well.”
Scrub Daddy shakes his head at the retelling. “That’s just what you’d expect Clean to say. That smile, the earring, nobody’s fooled. His original name was Helmut, you know. And who makes him? Proctor and Gamble. Who makes Scotch Brite? 3M. Didn’t they make napalm or something? Who makes Chore Boy? The Comet and Spic and Span people. They’re all in the pocket of Big Clean, all of them ganging up on a little guy like me. My margins are under constant attack – everybody wants a seat on my gravy train. Packaging designers. Distribution and logistics managers. Brand identity consultants. Social influencers. I’m everybody’s meal ticket. And retail – don’t get me started! It used to be you paid some doofus at Acme under the table for your shelf space at the supermarket, but you could still make a living. Now you have to go kiss Amazon’s ass for better positioning on a search, and a year later you’re competing against an Amazon Basics product that looks just like you at a twenty percent discount.”
We’re interrupted by Scrub Mommy, who enters with a pitcher of lemonade for us. She and Daddy regard each other and you can tell their smiles are genuine. But when this reporter accidentally drops his lemonade, Scrub Mommy throws herself to the floor in an instant, and in no time flat the spills is gone. “Yeah, she’s got a layer of ResoFoam that doesn’t quit – six times as absorbent as a regular sponge,” Scrub Daddy says admiringly. “And that crimson color – let’s just say that when I see her, it’s as if I was run under cold water for a while, you get my drift?” Scrub Mommy might have blushed, but being red, it was hard to tell.
A final question. Sure, Scrub Daddy is successful, famous, well-known – all the perks of celebrity accrue to him. But when you get down to it, his job is to smash his face into grease, grime, muck, char, and all of the other detritus of mealtime. It’s, for lack of a euphemism, a disgusting business. Doesn’t that ever wear on him?
Scrub Daddy scoffs. “Let me tell you something,” he snaps. “I look out at the world from the kitchen counter and I see scumbag lawyers defending vile clients, speculators and arbitrageurs profiting while creating nothing of value, people realizing fantastic incomes while the folks who teach kids, fight fires, or empty bedpans scrounge to get by. And then I’m asked if I find it degrading to take carbonized crud off a casserole or a cookie sheet. All I can say is there are some people who do rough jobs and there are other people who are lucky enough to watch them and wonder how it must feel.”
You would expect his smile to disappear and his round eyes to collapse into a steely gaze.
But, of course, they can’t.
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