Formula 409 - Budget Carpet Cleaning

Formula 409 is a brand of home & Industrial cleaning products well known in North America, but virtually unknown in other countries. It includes Formula 409 All-Purpose Cleaner, Formula 409 Glass and Surface Cleaner, Formula 409 Carpet Cleaner, and many others. The brand is currently owned by Clorox.

The flagship product was invented in 1957 by Morris D. Rouff which manufactured industrial cleaning supplies. Formula 409’s original application was as a commercial solvent and degreaser for industries that struggled with particularly difficult cleaning problems.

The inventor's family claim that it was named for the birthday of the inventor's wife, Ruth, on April the 9th (rendered in the American style with the month first as "4/09"). The company, however, claims that it was named simply as the 409th compound tested by the inventors. Other theories exist as urban legends such as 409 being the telephone area code where it was invented (this area code, which served southeastern Texas, was not introduced until 1983), the birthday being that of other people such as the inventor's daughter and even a reference to a powerful Chevrolet car engine.

In 1960, Rouff sold Formula 409 to Chemsol, a New York firm, for an amount in the low six-figure range. In the mid-1960s, entrepreneur Wilson Harrell, along with longtime friend David Woodcock and television personality Art Linkletter, bought Formula 409. Harrell, Woodcock & Linkletter bought it for $30,000 and took it national. Linkletter also promoted the product in television commercials. The company eventually took Formula 409 to a 55 percent share of the spray-cleaner market, and six years later, Harrell, Woodcock & Linkletter sold the company to Clorox for $7 million.

Advertising

Throughout the 1960s, commercials featured Betty Boop.

In the late 1990s to the early 2000s, a cover of The Beach Boys' "409" was used.

One commercial from 2005 shows a fictional Formula 410. As a character hits the trigger, electricity shoots out instead of spray. The announcer says, "Because the world is not ready for Formula 410, there's Formula 409".

Homemade Carpet Cleaning Recipe

Popular culture

Green Day song "409 in Your Coffeemaker" is allegedly inspired by a prank in which singer Billie Joe Armstrong put Formula 409 in his teacher's coffeemaker.