30+ Products That Were Accidentally Invented or Started Off as Something Different

The 1910s were a time riddled with strife, and certain world events led to a lot of injuries needing to be treated. That’s why Kimberly-Clark started using a new material, Cellucotton, to treat wounds.

The female nurses in the field, though, realized that its super absorbency was super useful for their own monthly personal hygiene, so when the world calmed down, Kotex found a new purpose in female “sanitary napkins.” Ladies everywhere are thankful for this one.

The items we use day to day weren’t always so disposable, and people didn’t really like the idea of any items for women being thrown away. But, Kimberly-Clark was determined to find more uses for their materials.

They created Kleenex and marketed it towards people using “cold cream towels,” but in the 1930s they finally hit the mark by selling it as your one-stop-shop for runny noses, which is how the world uses Kleenex now.

Anyone who has ever moved or bought something fragile knows the joys of playing with bubble wrap, that packaging plastic we see everywhere. But surprisingly, that’s not what bubble wrap was made for.

They actually made it as a textured wallpaper, but people weren’t really down for that idea, so they fumbled with what to do with it until they eventually convinced IBM to use it to protect fragile computer parts.

Nalgene is a super popular brand of thick plastic water bottles. One could even say that the look is iconic. But before water bottles became their thing, Nalgene was producing something else.

They originally produced plastic laboratory products for science experiments, like Petri dishes, test tubes, and other items, but ask any hiker around the world and they’ll probably tell you how glad they are that the brand shifted to water bottles!

Everyone nowadays knows and loves Lysol for its cleaning and antibacterial power in the home. It’s definitely the king of sanitizing products, and it’s so much so that it used to be advertised for sanitizing more than just countertops.

Lysol had some ads aimed towards women’s “cleanliness,” if you catch our drift. The ads were pretty problematic, because not only is Lysol definitely not safe to use on body parts, but they also implied that if a woman’s husband strayed, it was her fault for not being “clean.”

Nothing is more satisfying than gargling with a capful of Listerine and getting that minty fresh taste in your mouth. But before being a bad-breath-curing mouthwash, Listerine was for wounds.

It was made to be a surgical antiseptic, and there are even some old articles that recommend it for foot problems, like calluses and sweaty feet! Not only that, but it supposedly helped with dandruff and even colds. We’re not so sure we’d use it that way, so we’re glad they found their stride with mouthwash.

It’s impossible to live in modern society and not know what Coca-Cola is. Their marketing team has done a fantastic job of making sure you can’t even see the color red without thinking of the famous soda.

Before it was called Coca-Cola, though, it was Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, and it was a drink that could supposedly treat headaches, relieve anxiety, and help with other health issues. It’s a bit ironic since we all know now how bad sugar addiction can be.

When you’re a kid, there are two things that happen at school that turn a day into the best day ever: your P.E. teacher breaking out the rainbow parachute, and your art teacher bringing out Play-Doh.

Play-Doh wasn’t always for preschoolers, but was actually created by a soap manufacturer and meant to be used to be a great cleaner for wallpaper. It took another 20 years for Play-Doh to realize it was the perfect toy for kids and teachers to yell at their students not to put in their mouths.

The slinky is one of those toys that’s such a simple concept, yet it entertains kids for hours on end. The simple little plastic flexible spring wasn’t created to be a toy, though.

It was actually invented for stabilizing different instruments on ships when the water was rough. The inventor only saw it as a toy when one fell off a shelf and sprung around his desk, and the rest was history!

Have you ever chewed a piece of gum for a while, just to realize that not only has it entirely lost its flavor, but the texture has gotten more and more strange? Well, it wasn’t originally meant to be a food product.

Gum came about as a potential alternative to rubber, which explains the rubbery texture it gets when chewed for a while and why you shouldn’t swallow it. So, keep on chewing on that rubber, folks!

Did you know that mauve was actually the first commercially produced synthetic dye? Did you also know that it was produced entirely by accident when someone was trying to create a different product?

That’s right — a young inventor was trying to produce a substance used to treat malaria, yet he ended up discovering the dye for the color mauve. So, next time you grab a synthetically dyed garment (which is basically everything nowadays), you’ve got William Perkin to thank!

Cellophane, that clear plastic wrap that we all know and love to hate, wasn’t always for packaging food, nor for inspiring the name of a catchy musical number in Chicago. The inventor of the product had another idea in mind.

He actually wanted to make a coating that would give a water and stain-resistant layer to clothing and fabrics. We doubt he knew just how ubiquitous his product would become in our daily lives!

You’d be hard-pressed to find an office space these days that doesn’t have a stack of sticky notes, most likely specifically Post-it Notes, tucked away somewhere. The little yellow paper squares are perfect for leaving temporary notes.

The product was created by accident one day when Spencer Silver at 3M happened to create a sticky product called microspheres, and then added them to some yellow scrap paper he had lying around. It just shows how far a little initiative can go.

Teflon had a swift uprise as a miracle non-stick product, and then a swift downfall as the harm to the environment and the body came to light. Before becoming a coating on cookware, it was just a random substance.

Dr. Roy J. Plunkett was messing around with refrigerant gasses, and he happened to notice that a sample of something had morphed into PTFE, leading to the discovery of the most slippery material in existence! Its use on non-stick cookware was just a bonus.

When you look at any restaurant table, you’re likely to see a little ceramic pot with pink, yellow, blue, and white sachets. Just by mentioning the colors, you probably already know that we’re talking about sweeteners, both sugar and artificial.

Although saccharin isn’t used anymore, it paved the way for artificial sweeteners, and it was discovered by accident when a chemist ate dinner after having spilled a chemical compound on his hands earlier that day at work and realized what he had created!

There are a million and one types of stain removers on the market these days, and one of those is Zout. It’s now used in common households to get even the toughest of stains out, but before that, its purpose was dedicated to hospitals.

Due to the nature of hospitals, a lot of sheets end up with serious red stains, and Zout was an industrial-strength stain remover specifically for those pesky red stains. Now it’s used for anything and everything.

You probably have never heard of William Russell Frisbie, but you’re thinking, “That last name looks pretty familiar.” That’s because he had a super famous pie company where pies and cookies were cooked in a specific plate-shaped tray.

Students being students, though, they discovered that the trays made great entertainment and would hurt them at each other and shout “Frisbie!” before catching it. Hence the toy frisbee was born. We only wish frisbees came with a pie nowadays!

The world was going through a lot in the 1940s, and certain world events led to a shortage of many supplies, rubber being one of them. So scientists were asked to experiment with silicone to try to find something similar to rubber.

Its use as a rubber substitute didn’t quite work out, so the product sat there alone and useless until a toy store owner realized how much potential it had to entertain children and adults alike.

Bones are, like, really hard. Any time surgeons have to do some sort of procedure that cuts through the bone (which we hope isn’t frequently), they need the right tools to do so. That’s why a German surgeon invented the chainsaw.

Cutting through bones is pretty different from what we use chainsaws for now, but that’s how they got their start. The idea of someone using a mini chainsaw in a surgery theater is pretty horrific nowadays, though!

Just about every household in the world has a bottle of super glue tucked away in a drawer somewhere. The ultra-sticky substance was actually created by accident by Dr. Harry Wesley Coover in 1942.

He was actually trying to make clear plastic parts for another item when he ended up creating a new compound that’s now known as super glue. It was even used as a quick temporary way to close wounds before it became used as a general adhesive.

Have you ever gone to put something in your pocket just for it to not fit, and you look down only to realize you’ve tried to shove it in that mysterious tiny pocket? Well, that tiny pocket used to be useful.

It was designed to hold a pocket watch, which used to be much more common than they are nowadays. People have since found a new use for it, from storing coins to matches.

Speaking of matches, a lot of us have wondered how exactly those strange little fiery sticks came to be. They happened completely by accident! It turns out that a British chemist scraped a stick on his hearth.

It was covered in chemicals, and they lit on fire when he did that, which sparked the idea of marketing it as a product in his mind. That’s how we ended up with the modern matchstick.

We doubt there are people out there who don’t know that toothpicks are made for what their name implies — picking food out from between your teeth (please don’t be a person who does this in public). But, that’s probably their least common use nowadays.

Toothpicks have expanded far beyond teeth, being used for loads of crafts, to check whether cakes are done in the center, and in “guess how many there are” games. Those little wooden sticks sure are versatile.

Most ovens come with a drawer on the bottom, and the majority of people use it as a place to store extra pots and pans, although that’s not actually what it’s for.

To be fair, in some ovens that really is all that it is, but in many ovens, it’s actually a warming drawer where you can store finished dishes until you’re done cooking everything else! That’s much more useful than plain old storage space.

It can be difficult to control the hydration levels in babies and young children, especially when they’re sick. That means they get dehydrated very easily, which is where Pedialyte comes in. At least, that’s what it was created for.

Now, it’s mostly used by adults who had a big night out and are fighting pains due to one too many adult beverages. We doubt the company cares as it just means they’re selling even more product!

Most glass bottles have a very distinct design. They’ve got a long, narrow neck and a wider bottom. Most of us probably haven’t given much thought to why they’re designed that way, but there is a reason.

They’re not simply to look nice. They were created that way so that you can hold the bottle without touching where the liquid is and warming it up too fast. It’s an awkward way to hold it, though, so we can see why most people don’t do that.

There are two places that become bottomless pits for items that don’t have another home: that one random drawer in the kitchen, and car gloveboxes. But, if you stop and look at the name, you’ll realize what gloveboxes are actually for.

When cars first became popular, most drivers would wear gloves, which meant they needed somewhere to store them when they weren’t behind the wheel — which is how the glovebox was born.

They say that if you need to fix something and you’re not sure what to use, duct tape is always the answer. But before being a redneck fix for broken things, duct tape served a different purpose.

Johnson & Johnson developed it as a waterproof tape to keep moisture out of different objects, mimicking how duck feathers repel moisture, which is why it’s called duct (or duck) tape. Now we use it for anything and everything.

It’s difficult to imagine life without a microwave. It’s just so convenient and easy to use. The microwave is another thing that was actually discovered completely by accident when an engineer was testing magnetron tubes.

He put his hand in his pocket and found that his snack had melted and started experimenting with other foods to see what had happened, which gave him the idea for the microwave oven. This is one accidental invention we’re all super thankful for.

Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that Crayola crayons are far superior to any other brand. That’s probably because Crayola has been perfecting its recipe since 1905, now boasting over 120 different colors.

Before crayons were used by children worldwide to color their pictures, they were mostly for industrial use, likely for labeling things and other similar purposes. Teachers are definitely glad they’re now for kids since they’re sturdier than color pencils and markers.

There’s nothing better than a popsicle on a hot summer day, and it’s hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. But, if you’ve ever wondered why there’s a wooden stick inside of them, look no further.

It was accidentally invented by an 11-year-old boy who left some soda water powder mixed with water on his front porch during a freezing night with the stirring stick still inside. He remembered the incident when he was older and the rest is history!

Like Coca-Cola, 7UP’s start was very different from the tangy lemon-lime soda we enjoy today. It was actually called “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” and it contained a certain chemical that was mood stabilizing.

It contained that substance all the way through to 1950, when it shifted into being a normal soft drink, much like Coca-Cola did. However it got its start, there’s nothing better than a cold 7UP on a warm day.

Pacemakers are little machines that doctors implant to help control the heartbeat in people with heart conditions, but they weren’t originally intended for that use. Wilson Greatbatch, an engineer, was building a product to record the rhythm of heartbeats.

He attached the wrong thing to the circuit he was building, but it was actually the perfect rhythm, and thus the pacemaker was born. He couldn’t have known what a difference he would make in people’s lives in the future.

The Hitachi Magic Wand was designed with one thing in mind: helping people find relief from intense knots in their muscles via powerful vibrations. But it’s pretty easy to infer the use it’s come to have for most people.

Hitachi refuses to acknowledge that their product is now used most often to “give women a good time,” instead preferring to carry on in ignorance. As long as they keep making them, their customers won’t care.

Cotton swabs, or what most people just call Q-tips, are one of those products that can be found in nearly every home around the world. They were originally created for cleaning out ear wax.

The funny thing is that the company now swears that’s not what they’re for as it’s been shown that it’s not wise to stick small objects in your ears, but that’s definitely what they were made to do, and most people still do it anyway!