When A Brand Name Becomes A Lie

Earlier this year, the makers of Zyrtec antihistamine decided to leverage the popularity of their allergy-relief medication by introducing a tie-in product under the same name. That product is this:

Now, admittedly, they do say “non-medicated” on the package, but when the brand name you’re running with is a medication, that disclaimer is almost certain to get overlooked. And apparently that’s what happened - a lot. When they were introduced, they were popping up in a lot of places; I saw displays in lots of local stores. And we even bought some online ourselves because my S.O. was having an allergic reaction problem that was causing minor skin rashes, and we thought that perhaps applying a topical antihistamine might help. (Benadryl makes a cream for that, after all, and it actually contains Benadryl.) The Zyrtec wipes seemed to sort of help, but they were a bit pricey, and it took a while before they were used up - at which point we debated getting more. A quick check for local stock turned up nothing; local outlets had all dropped it. We wondered why this had happened, until I spotted the fact that these Zyrtec wipes contained zero Zyrtec. My assumption is that enough buyers discovered the ruse and returned or complained about the product to cause the brick-and-mortar places to quietly pull them off the floor. Loads of them are for sale on eBay, though. And I’ve found no statement from their maker about them at all; quelle surprise!

Given the silence, the lack of a formal recall, or any other visible public OBTW statements, I guess they think we should all consider ourselves lucky that the wipes don’t contain opium, arsenic, radium, or any of the other dangerous things that “miracle cures” of the 1900s routinely had in their formulas.

Anyway, should these wipes end up remaindered here for what looks like a really lowball price, now you know why.