Mortein vs Baygon #2

..so Mortein was under threat from a product that produced a rapid kill for crawling insects.

For the first time, Mortein had to play catch up. For a start, It didn’t have a surface spray and had to work out how to make one..

But Mortein products used synthetic pyrethroids as their insecticides, which causes insects to go through a hyperactivity stage.

So the strategy that Mortein came up with was to emphasise the one clear advantage that pyrethroids had over organophosphate insecticides (like in Baygon) – that it was less toxic.

The great advantage that pyrethroids had was that they have very low human toxicity.  They decided to use this as a marketing ploy and actually use it in the name of the product – it was called Mortein LOW TOX surface spray.

So consumers when they were shopping for insecticides would see the Baygon can with the DANGEROUS POISON label (required by law for an S7 poison), and the Mortein can with LOW TOX in big friendly letters (a little bit like the DON’T PANIC on the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which was also in large friendly letters).

So how effective were they as insecticides?

As it happens, the Baygon would outperform the LOW TOX for the 1st month, but then its effectiveness would drop away, and the LOW TOX would outperform it for the next two months.

So who won?  Well, Mortein won.  The LOW TOX was the winner because consumers were becoming concerned about the potential health effects of these chemicals,  particularly on children.  But Baygon did not then just go away – what they did was to themselves start using synthetic pyrethroids.

So these days, they are alll the same.  The dichlorvos and propoxur based formulations have now disappeared from the Australian market completely.